A Dance With New York
by float like a sponge
Summary: Two years after the finale, all of the Friends, especially Monica, Chandler, Ross, And Rachel. Dark end of the world story focusing on individual relationships. This is my first fic so R&R. Thanks.
1. Friday

**Friday**

New York's skyline moved loosely among the broken twilight sky. White clouds floating gracefully began to take their dramatic bows. A sense of time and change steamed up from the black streets, simultaneously comforting and disorienting Rachel Gellar.

The city wore her brightest dress of white lights and yellow lamps with resonating brilliance. and scattered clouds blanketed her with a false sense of comfort. Yet still New York danced on.

Her cabs swayed along the swell of her paved roads and concrete bridges.

Fragments of gravel exploding and imploding silently under the weight of rubber tires.

It was only a matter of time before the fires of the Village, Manhattan, Soho, and the Bronx set off the sky and forced it to explode with water and quell the invisible heat illuminating the city's metal and glass.

Yet the sky was patient and New York rhythmically danced into the promise of American infinity.

She danced through tragedy.

She danced through laughter.

Dancing through the past. Dancing for the sky to burst.

No New Yorker is exempt from the impetuous dance vibrating through our inventions. There's a transfer of power in metropolises and suddenly the architects are scaled into their creations.

Awe inspiring and perilous buildings tearing at the space above.

The dance inevitably becomes a part of their soul.

As Rachel stepped into the streetlight of West Avenue it was clear she was the progeny of the city's rhythmic manifestation.

It was something that took a lifetime to connect with.

The translucent strings puppeteering her seamlessly through the evening.

She walked across the street with the sway of gravel and let her heels announce her presence with sharp wooden taps. She was the daughter of her New York and she too was dancing.

The effortless choreography of her walk, concluded in front of a dimmed light illuminating a new upscale Latin-themed restaurant. She nodded at the doorman and he, a tall handsome man of his late twenties, smiled and consented by opening the red glass door.

There was a comfort in their interaction because after all, it was simply methodical.

As she immersed herself into the thick air filled with spice and pepper, she shed her jacket and as if on cue a servant ushered it away. There she stood at the top of the short stairs, reveling in nothing short of a grand entrance from some popular off-Broadway number.

A formal white tank top wrapped around her curves and progressed into a flowing skirt, which cut right above her knees. Her defined tanned legs ended gracefully into a pair of black strapped stilettos.

She stood atop the stairs and allowed for her eyes to focus on the individual tables before her. Her face held slight concentration; the learned discipline of a strong woman who learned to control fear years ago.

She glanced toward the dance floor and the gentle waves of her long dark blonde hair swayed in accordance.

There was still time until her dance would have to end. There was enough time before the sky would burst into daylight or rain, before her life would reenter the inflexibility of realism.

She knew a truth was on its way that would change everything she knew. Yet tonight she still had an hour and forty-five minutes; and nobody could tell her differently.

As she passed the tables with the soft swing of her hips, her mind couldn't help but wonder what other individual dances were being conducted this night. Which of these were also coming to an end?

The woman at the table to the right sits alone quietly sipping a martini a lifetime past empty.

Her eyes at first glance would give one the impression of sophistication and yet a second glance would expose some distant sadness flickering in the experience of her stare. Sometimes we dance alone.

There are times when even the best, tango along the edges of depression, loneliness, and despair balancing their weight with an empty martini.

Always a routine.

As Rachel walked away from the woman, she pushed the thoughts out her mind until all that was left was a craving for an apple martini and company.

With determined resolution she pushed her way through crowd and past the tables until she at last reached her destination, resembling nothing short of heaven.

The wooden dance floor glowed with soft red lights as salsa music occupied her ears and dripped into her soul. There was a light crowd tonight and even still she closed her eyes to shut the world out.

After an urban pilgrimage to this place, she saw it as nothing less than sacred. This haven with soft reddened hard wood floors gave the impression that too many had spilt their blood dancing their troubles into these floorboards.

Just so tonight, her troubles and transgressions would ease into beads of perspiration and release themselves into the ground until they were lost behind blood, sweat, and rhythm.

Before she knew it she was actually dancing. This beautiful girl distanced and yet so understood among the crowd. She swung her arms around her head and then caressed the back of her neck.

The tension of over ten years of laughter, fighting and understanding fell into the floor. She moved her feet forward and slid past the Rachel of years past, self -involved and weak. Her stomach moved and connected with the warmth from countless years of friendship.

Her thighs swayed to the left and the sweet perfume the trailing behind was the memory of her daughter's smile and the man she loved. The man she loves.

So she danced on, shedding and embracing the memories the dance brought forth. She was used to the routine. Though she could never tell you the song. She danced for what felt like an eternity until she felt the soft familiar touch of a man's hand on the small of her back.

Before she could turn around, he gently wrapped his other hand around her waist and caressed her stomach with his thumb. Rachel smiled sincerely and fell back into the rhythm of the man's shoulders. He bent his head toward her shoulders. She arched back into his chest.

For five minutes in time, this dance was theirs, and their sole existence rested on it.

Yet as the music faded, his movement slowly stopped until they were just standing still. Her back imprinted in his blue polo button shirt.

She let the last strain of tension roll from her eye with a single tear and then turned to face the man she loved. Rachel kept her face to his chest. She couldn't look him in the eyes. He closed his eyes and slowly stroked her back, patiently waiting for the sky to burst.

She turned her head sideways while still leaning into his body, and looked into the world of the Latin restaurant that had slowly fallen back into place around her.

She took in a desperate breath and inhaled the cologne, soft and resembling nearly twelve years of familiarity.

Lights and people were blurred as tears swelled in her eyes. While the shadows and echoes of a world far away surrounded her, Rachel fell deeply into her mind.

Simply wondering how to tell the man who had danced behind her for so many years that his world was about to change.


	2. A conversation of too many words

**That Previous Monday**

Chandler stirred his half empty cup of white mocha chocolate absentmindedly as he desperately tried to think of some funny one liner to say once his best friend arrived at Central Perk. He hadn't seen him in what had to be three weeks and which in Chandler and Ross time amounted to a decade, give or take a few days. His excitement however was overshadowed by his guilt.

There were so many things he wanted to tell Ross and yet none could be articulated without choking in his mouth, physically incapable of confession. Chandler suddenly felt the tremendous urge to leave. He would run his way through the trenches and if he should confront Ross on his way out he would fire off an array of excuses about work or something.

Yet as much as he wanted to take off running, Chandler was weighted down by his conscience; and rendered paralyzed. When he resumed stirring his mocha he heard the rush of wind and New York City traffic from the opening door of the café. Something told him before he even glanced away from the table that it was his best friend. It was soon confirmed by the café owner Gunther's frown and muttered obscenities. Even though the door just allowed the entrance of one man, to Chandler, it felt as if the world flew into the cramped café and sat comfortably on his shoulders with a cup of coffee and copy of the New York Times.

Ross eased himself into Central Perk with the familiarity of twelve years of practice. He lightly stepped down the first step inside the café without even glancing down. He looked unbelievably comfortable in loose faded blue jeans and a fitting black t-shirt. His hair was lowly cut with light spikes and soft barely noticeable brown highlights.

These days the ease of his movements were probably the physical manifestation of his growth as human being. Ross nodded a polite hello to Gunther, who he was sure resented him, and yet these days it didn't really matter. Since the day Rachel stepped off a Paris bound plane and into his New York City apartment he knew it was time to change.

He was never an unpleasant person to begin with but once the love of your life nearly leaves your world, you find ways to better yourself. For instance, the biggest change in Ross these last two years was his confidence and security. His demeanor is that of a seasoned thirty year old who's secure enough to laugh at himself, calm enough to listen before speaking, and passionate enough to fight for what he loves.

These new characteristics gave Ross an attractive quality everyone couldn't help but notice. He actually had more single woman approach him now that he was married than he ever had in his awkward single days. However none of the attention mattered much to Ross because he had the love of a woman who loved him in his best and in his worst. Even she had to admit the mid thirties were an appealing age for Ross Gellar.

As Ross settled into the chair sitting opposite Chandler at the small table, Chandler silently wandered how it must look, the stark contrast between Ross' lively fresh features and Chandler's tired emotionless face. Ross ordered a coffee and seemed oblivious to the cute young waitress who kept smiling down at him. Finally Ross looked towards her and said politely, "I'm married." The waitress looked flustered and muttered "I'm embarrassed." "It's okay…usually I wear a sign but pink doesn't really flatter the outfit today so…" The waitress smiled and gave him his coffee on the house. Chandler couldn't help but give a light smile to his brother in law who finally found a sense of humor about himself.

"Okay so what's wrong?" Ross asked directly to Chandler who seemed caught off guard by the inquisition. Chandler contemplated uttering off some lie that would be lost in conversation. He just wanted this meeting to fade into the background of Central Perk, forgotten among the smells of the various coffee beans and sounds of the acoustic guitar on stage.

Yet the gentle brown eyes of his best friend demanded the truth. So Chandler jumped right in. "Ross…the suburbs…they're killing us." Ross look at him inquisitorially but remained silent. Chandler took in a deep breath and looked for some distraction within the café but after finding nothing he was forced to continue. " God, was this what we wanted? We thought it was…we were so damn confident. It was an ideal, we were chasing after what we thought we should want. Then after the twins got sick…everything was so empty. That's when I think we knew were dying too. She couldn't even look at me for months after they…" Chandler trailed off as Ross patiently listened to a conversation that required few words.

Ross remembered vividly the day the twins died. He remembered it so well because it was the saddest day of their lives. Rachel cried all day as she watched after their daughter Emma at Chandler and Monica's house. Joey accompanied Ross and Chandler at the hospital when they first got the call that the twins would have to stay overnight. Chandler who had already feared the worst, refused to let his exhausted wife endure anymore than she had to.

So Monica stayed at home while Phoebe resolutely stood by her side. The last month before that had been a stressful string of hospital visits for the twins and it seemed that their health was finally improving until Chandler called that October day and confirmed the worst. Ross clearly recalled the colors of the day because he saw the pale faces of the twins as the doctor declared them dead from a rare case of fatal pneumonia.

He saw the way Chandler turned white and passed out while driving back home that night. He saw the blood from his own knee pouring out from a broken bone cutting his skin after the car had veered off the road and hit a tree. He saw the bluish black bruise on Joey's forehead slowly growing as Joe attempted to call 911 from the empty road. He saw Chandler stunned and unharmed leaning against the tire. He remembered seeing Rachel's flushed red face running toward his hospital bed. He remembered the smell of that day because it was the smell of a hospital bed. It was the smell of salty tears; and it was the alcohol later that night on Monica's breath at the hospital as she screamed she hated this life.

Ross grabbed his best friend's shoulder and he saw the weight of the world Chandler still carried a year after their deaths. "Stop if you want Chandler, you don't have to say anything." Chandler violently shook his head and Ross could tell he was dangerously close to breaking down. In a strained voice he replied, "No…Ross there is something you should know about me and Monica…it's just that you're her bother and I…"

"Chandler right now, if just for this minute, I am your best friend, so what's going on?" Ross' face was now occupied with a very serious expression and his hands were braced on the table. Chandler continued slowly "I need for you understand that for nearly a year and a half now I've been at war with myself. Some days worse than others. Ross I refuse to be like my father, to leave my family. But tell me where is my family? Monica barely speaks or kisses me. We sleep in different rooms. The crying…the fighting…the alcohol….our kids… I just, I just think that maybe its over."

Ross sat there in his place stunned. Chandler rubbed the corners of his eyes and tried to manage the appearance of normalcy. Ross now noticed how tired his best friend's appearance seemed. No one would recognize him as the sarcastic twenty something that once daily occupied that couch just 8 feet away. Eventually Chandler stood up somberly and adjusted his gray jacket, pulling the already straight collar upwards. Ross remained silent as he carefully thought of what to say.

He wanted to rescue his friend from his despair, he wanted to downplay the issues discussed, but he knew each statement was true. For a rare moment words failed Ross and he just said with hopeful assurance, " Anytime you need to talk, you know I'm here man." Chandler nodded goodbye as if any hope he had left died and he walked out of the café quickly. He didn't look back at the place that was once his entire world. He guessed he always kind of knew he would be the first to leave.


	3. Monday's Afternoon

Monica sat in the dark of the kitchen refusing to move and forcing herself to breath. Every moment she was forcing herself to breath. Forcing every morning and every night. She wondered how long anyone could force life.

This had become her routine; her dance of suburban redundancy. These days her hair was longer and her appearance was thinner; she looked almost gaunt. Nobody had noticed though. A sharp honey colored drink was in her left hand as her right hand flipped through pages in her family photo album.

She smirked at the implications of the word family; her mother and father never appreciated her, Ross was too involved with his own family, and Chandler…well Chandler was too weak to deal with any of this. She sipped her drink slowly, valuing every taste; she had become quite seasoned with alcohol over the past year.

Monica's right hand kept moving until it came upon a picture of the twins, Jack and Erica with their surrogate mother. She should have known then, that moment was too good to be true. Happiness eluded people like her, she should have been smarter. It was all just the illusion of a dance they never knew. Now she danced alone without direction, without rhythm.

Just then Chandler fumbled into the kitchen door from the garage. She didn't notice him until he dropped his keys on the light wooden floor. He struggled to find his keys in the dark as he felt the floor and all the crumbs and dust on its surface; cleaning was an endeavor Monica had long forgotten.

Eventually he found them and forcefully threw them onto a nearby kitchen counter. Then the rarest thing occurred, Monica spoke to him without provocation.

She glanced towards her husband's direction and asked, "Are you drunk?" Her tone was curiosity much more than concern. Chandler surprised and angered simultaneously spattered back, " Would you notice?"

The arguments over alcohol had long ended and Monica just shrugged her shoulders indifferently. Usually at this point one of them would sulk in front of their TV while the other would go to bed; but tonight Chandler was slightly intoxicated, and that was all he needed to push the envelope further.

As Monica began to rise from the table leaving the album behind and continuing to hold the bourbon glass, Chandler stood in front of the door to the living room.

There they stood, two figures shadowed in the dark glaring down accusations and tension. For the first time in weeks Monica made eye contact with her husband. The more she glared, the angrier she felt, and she knew then that she blamed him for everything that had happened here.

Through clinched teeth Monica demanded, " Get out of the way." Chandler frowned at first but then started laughing slightly until it was border line hysterical. Monica just stared on unappeased.

Chandler laughed, "you want me to get out of the way…that is so funny cause you throw me into your mess constantly Monica. You blame me for everything, I see it in your eyes, I hear it in between the silences. So why don't we just be truthful for one damn second Monica. Just say it….say I killed them!"

Monica looked away forcefully and it was obvious that Chandler crashed through her mask of indifference. Chandler felt a brief rush of guilt and for a second he felt like he loved her again as she placed her drink down and sank against the table for support. Chandler swallowed the bitter taste and his mouth and took a step toward her. Monica tensed as she felt his presence approaching.

He stopped and stood three feet away from her small figure, pleading in his eyes and emotion burning with vodka in his chest. After a few

minutes of silence, that resembled eternity, Monica stood up fully and took a step forward until she was as close to face to face as their height difference would allow.

Her sharp blue eyes carefully examined his face and then she spoke her fatal words, "You still are nobody, Chandler. Yes

I blame you. I don't know why I'm still here. Now move." She slid past Chandler and began to walk through the door when Chandler shouted, "you're drunk, you don't mean this." Monica sighed tiredly "so are you Chandler." As Chandler began to fight through tears he solemnly stated, "I know you love me." Monica turned coldly, "whatever helps you sleep off that hangover Chandler."


	4. Chandler and Rachel

The dim lights of Ross and Rachel's apartment fended off the darkness of New York's nine o'clock. The apartment was nearly completely silent since its loudest occupant Emma was at her grandmother's for the next two nights. The only sounds audible within the living room were the air conditioner and the heavy breathing of two individuals, both on opposite walls.

Rachel fought to catch her breath as she pushed the hair out of her face and pulled her dress and bra strap back up. She rubbed the bruise on her shoulder in disbelief as she stared at the perpetrator across the room. Tears were streaming down her face as the realization of what just happened settled in.

Her lamp lay broken into a hundred pieces behind the front couch. Her memory struggled to sequence the events that took only ten minutes to pass: She was waiting for Ross to get home from a long jog in the park. There was a knock on the door and then there was Chandler in her doorway; broken and intoxicated.

He walked straight in and collapse onto her couch asking for Ross. Rachel went over to ask what happened, what was wrong, where was Monica. She turned on the light and blew out the candles around her as she sat down next to her friend of twelve years.

Chandler managed only to mumble something about bourbon, twins, and blame. In his dramatic verbal finale he spat out he and Monica were over. The smell of alcohol accompanied every word he uttered. Rachel remembered being overwhelmed and speechless.

She got a call earlier from Ross about his and Chandler's morning at the café but she didn't realize how bad it was between them. Monica never let it show. Her act of denial and dancing in suburbia was so perfect her best friend couldn't see through her routine. Rachel remembered reaching for Chandler's hand. She remembered Chandler taking her hand. Her clouded blue eyes meet his voided blue stare; and all familiarity in this exchange disappeared.

Chandler began to lean in for a hug, but as if at the last minute the vodka in him decided he wanted more. Rachel remembered his mouth roughly clashing with hers as she fell backwards off of the couch. Chandler's words rang through the living room as he screamed with a mix of tears and spit, "I just need someone, tonight…I can't do this alone."

Rachel had never ever seen this alcohol induced Chandler and it terrified her because it promised anything could happen. She remembered the strange combination of confusion, sadness, and fear manifesting within her as she backed into a wall, knocking off books and artifacts from the bookshelf.

Chandler clumsily followed Rachel to the floor and fell against her and pulled the fabric on her dress. Rachel felt the weight of this man she couldn't recognize pushing her into the floor. She struggled to fend him off, but Chandler's lazy weight was too much for her small frame. She screamed out for Ross, but her cries couldn't reach the trails of Central Park.

In desperation she focused all her efforts into reaching Chandler's sensibilities, as she held her dress down she looked into his vacant eyes and pleaded for him not to do this: "Chandler, I know you love Monica….please don't do this…Chandler…oh my god…think about Ross, he's your best friend… Chandler she's my best friend…please…"

The scuffling of feet and hands stopped as Chandler lay hovering over her. Then as if struck by the realization of his actions by a bullet he collapsed into the floor in loud sobs, trembling all over. "Oh my God, Oh my God, I…what am I doing" His words were slurred by emotion, or perhaps just the alcohol as he began to crawl backwards away from her until he was cowering in the shadow of an opposite wall.

Her dress was torn slightly but she had been able to keep herself well covered. Her shoulder throbbed in pain from were she had fallen onto the floor and her heart was rushing blood through her body entirely too fast. She felt every part of herself pulsing and trembling, afraid and shocked.

She was astounded that this happened and perhaps even more surprised at how quickly it stopped. Just as Rachel put together the sequence of events that transpired while she lay there taking in deep breaths and hearing shallow replies from the darkness across the room, she finally noticed the wide open front door. She realized that Chandler had never closed the door.

She then recognized for the first time that they weren't alone. The rhythmic sound of the air conditioner and breathing was interrupted by a breathless name from Rachel's mouth as she adjusted her eyes to the figure in the hallway, "Monica…"

"You know I would ask what the hell is going on, but I guess it's a little late for me to play the loving wife." Monica said dryly as anger laced every word.

Chandler who was barely aware of his surroundings anymore tried to stand up, but when he failed he sufficed with half of a question: "how did you…" Monica finished the question for him, "How did I find you here? I figured you were going to run to one of your best friends tonight, and since Joey's on a date…You know Chandler the funny thing is that I came looking for you because I wanted to apologize for the things I said earlier. I wanted to talk about us. But now…"

Monica couldn't even finish the sentence as her blue eyes swelled with anger. Rachel could see Chandler was frightened of what Monica may have seen, but he was even more so disgusted with himself. The vodka wasn't strong enough to suppress regret or embarrassment.

Rachel attempted an explanation , " Monica…he's drunk…judging by your speech I think you are too a little. This was all just a huge mistake…we can talk about it in the morning and you guys can crash here if you need..." Monica gave a small stifling laugh as tears invaded her fair face.

Rachel barely recognized her best friend when the shadows contoured her face. "I guess this explains why my brother used to be so jealous…you have a way of provoking male advances huh Rach." Rachel gasped desperately as if she was directing all her energy into not suffocating, " you think I wanted this?"

She looked at Monica stunned with betrayal. Monica met her question calmly behind tears with what seemed to be a new found clarity, " Rachel, do you think I wanted this?" She turned to Chandler and added, " Just so you know, you were right…I did still love you."

With that she glanced at Rachel's dress and tears, she then looked over at Chandler with contempt and regret. Monica sighed heavily suppressing all her hurt and shock and met her best friend's hurt stare for the last time, then she stepped out of the apartment making sure to close the door behind her.


	5. Joey's Tuesday

**That Tuesday **

Joey sat in unusual contemplation within his small apartment where a single window welcomed sounds of urban conveniences from the street below. The cabs, the laughter, the heels, the brakes, the music were all the same as before and this made Joey nauseous. How could the world go on after he just ended it? Within twenty four hours he had caused destruction equivalent to a social atomic bomb, and the destination of Hiroshima was right there in his confined apartment.

Evidence of the aftermath and radiation lay exposed all over the floor, couch, and bed. A confused array of shoes, shirts, underwear thrown and torn cast accusations at the tired thirty something. And as he sat there in the dark, he was a man of no excuses. He was no stranger to the awkward mornings following passionate nights.

However for this day awkward doesn't even begin to explain the storm of guilt, embarrassment, anger, and sheer torture that followed yesterday's night. When they woke up in his bed, neither he or she could stand making eye contact. It was as if the mere possibility of seeing one another would confirm and destroy everything.

Joey immediately left the room and sat on his living room couch wearing nothing but a robe. She stayed in the sheets of his bed naked and wrapped in humiliation.

They both knew they would never be friends again. They both knew what they did was unforgivable. Three hours passed as they remained frozen by the culpability of their actions.

From time to time Joey would hear soft whimpers which transgressed into loud sobs erupting from his bedroom. He squinted his eyes refusing tears and rubbed his head as to physically remove memory. He wanted to run in there and comfort her but he knew somberly neither of them deserved comfort.

Suddenly a loud knock tore Joey away from his suppressive guilt. His eyes jolted back into focus and he noticed the dark shadows of a 7:00 evening blanketing his apartment. The door erupted with sound again and pulled Joey quickly to his feet. Out of habit, he reached for the door and threw it open widely to meet the source of the knocking, forgetting familiar faces had long left the halls of this apartment building.

"Hey…" Chandler forced out the greeting trying not to talk to much. He knew he couldn't control his tone for very long. Each word had the potential to let his guilt slip into the attentive ears of one of his best friends. Joey would know something was wrong. However the Joey in front of him was a man preoccupied with his own remorse and confusion.

He replied with an equally forced and somewhat surprised "hi". He knew Chandler would show up probably, but somehow he found himself unprepared for the actual moment. 'Here it comes' Joey thought to himself 'just ask…I know It's why you're here'. Finally after strained silence Chandler coughed up the question and sole reason he was there. "Have you seen …?"

All Joey could do was stare back at Chandler who finally managed to make eye contact. With rehearsed dialogue, Joey

explained she came by late last night but ultimately left and stayed at her parents when she figured Chandler would come by.

Chandler winced at his her avoidance to even potentially be around him. He took in a desperately long breath and looked past Joey.

Joey shuffled his feet nervously because Chandler wasn't looking away from inside the apartment. Eventually Chandler muttered, "so

you know what I did…I mean, you know why she left me yesterday?" Joey met his gaze and nodded a slow yes.

It was all he could do. "I…it was a mistake man…I don't know what… I just can't breathe right now" Chandler's voice cracked on

these last few words and he knew he couldn't say anything more. Joey nodded again and this time managed to say, "I

understand…you don't have to explain."

In all actuality Joey didn't understand Chandler's actions and he wanted to punch his lights out right there in the hallway.

No amount of alcohol would change the gravity of what he did. However Joey was too wrapped in his own problems to say much,

instead he just stared stoically ahead. Chandler turned his head away as tears formed in the corners of his soft blue eyes. All Joey

could do is pray Chandler would just turn around and go home. All he could do was pray Chandler didn't hear Monica crying in his

bedroom over the New York City traffic.


	6. Wednesday

**That Wednesday**

Phoebe, Mike, and Ross were squeezed into the small confines of space left on Central Perk's couch as a young group of friends surrounded their familiar area.

Mike looked slightly annoyed because of the lack of comfort, but Ross and Phoebe smiled with nostalgic glances and listened to the nuances of one of the guys who sounded just like Chandler: "So I had this dream…"

The twenty something went on recounting his dreams to friends who were equally amused: there were two guys, four girls. Ross thought about his friends who had occupied this couch regularly for over ten years .

He saw Monica and Chandler firing sarcastic remarks at each other, Joey learning the guitar from Phoebe, Rachel going on about some fashion victim, and he saw himself storming into the café with nothing but the word "hi".

'Things have changed so much,' Ross thought as he slowly reemerged into his current surroundings.Ross turned to Phoebe, "So have you heard anything new lately with the guys?"

Phoebe shook her head, " No not really…Rachel isn't keeping track of everyone?" "Not so much these days…she's actually been really quiet these last two days."

Phoebe and Mike gave a collective 'that's odd' expression. Then Gunther came from behind the counter and tapped Phoebe on her shoulder, "it's time, if you want."

Phoebe smiled and turned towards her guys, "well I guess its time…one last play." Mike and Ross replied with a strong "yep." Phoebe un-wedged herself from the couch and began making her way toward the stage as the whole café turned towards her in anticipation.

Eight minutes later and applause amplified the small café with cheers and whistles, she was done, and Ross smiled softly with emotion, as he had just heard the encore of Smelly Cat for the last time.

* * *

Rachel breathed in the familiar smells the hallway as she reached Monica's old apartment door. With her back to the door she had long considered home Rachel knocked on Joey's apartment door.

She was caught in between the two worlds of a New York city hallway. Behind her lay the past, whispering proverbial stories and feelings; she felt echoes of voices saying "I love you", "look, look there's got to be a way we can get past this. I can't imagine my life without you" ,"maybe we should just take a break", "The job is in Paris".

Phrases of moments long past swirled around her as she waited in the hallway for the future to open its door. Joey's apartment itself possessed a background just as rich as Monica's apartment, however Rachel realized that memories weren't going to open this door.

There was a tinged mixture of dread within her stomach as she considered what possibly may lay before her. She knew her best friend was beyond hurt; they were long past comforting words and promising mornings. Rachel knocked again.

Scenarios danced through her mind, weaving in and out like wind brushing past fall leaves; some scenarios fell harder than others. Monica was desperately wounded. Rachel chased after her, but Monica was long gone. Where else would she have gone at that hour? Who was the most convenient to run too? …Then came the thought she dreaded.

One word, the most probable reaction…revenge. Who would hurt Chandler the most? Was Monica that changed, that unreasonable, that vindictive? An internal voice answered her you never lost Emma, you never lost Ross, and you never lost yourself.

As Rachel heard someone begin to slowly open the door, she prayed that her scenarios were just that, fantastical scenarios.

Eventually the door swung completely open and the harsh yellow light from the hallway poured into the dark kitchen and living room.

Joey's dimmed figure laid against the doorway and Rachel involuntarily gasped. Joey's handsome features were somehow dead now and glazed over with baggy eyes and dark shadows. Rachel couldn't explain it in any other way, except maybe he was Joey without that childish Joey glow; and to her, that wasn't Joey.


	7. A conversation in retrospect

Hey guys, thank you for staying with this story. It will be finished before the new year. this is my goal and motivation. I've just had a hectic school semester but now I'm on break so this story is my focus. As always thanks for reading guys and continue to review.

* * *

A Conversation in Retrospect 

Standing under the golden leaves of Central Park, which were acting as natural satellites to the slender trees, Ross breathed in slowly as absolute confusion invaded his lungs and pierced his chest.

The cold wind beat against his anxious face forcing his eyes to water slightly as Phoebe walked out of the park, her blonde hair vivaciously stirring behind her, reflecting the light of a dying sun. She stepped casually on the city sidewalk and effortlessly back into the flow of New York's time.

Ross turned around, loudly crunching the brown leaves under his feet, as he glanced back towards the direction of Central Perk. His world paused as he saw the pieces of trash, newspaper, and wet grass shifting under his feet.

30 minutes ago he was wrapped in nostalgic history, warm and beautiful. Coffee burning his tongue before warming his body. The sounds of a wonderfully off key song filling his ears.

20 minutes ago he was saying his goodbyes as Mike left earlier for a piano performance.

15 minutes ago, after Rachel called and said she would stay at Joey's for a while, he made the gesture for Phoebe and himself to take a walk through the park.

The park was growing dark and the lights flickered reluctantly into existence around the path he stood in the middle of. Somehow he had the distinct impression the wind had picked up tremendously although he could not longer feel it.

He watched the trees bend around him as his cold hands were shoved into the pockets of his long wool coat.

Ross took in a huge breath.

Life flooded back into his chest. Motion began to resume around him.

Looking up into the gray sky, his brown eyes searching, almost demanding an answer from anywhere in the unknown to fall upon him and give him comfort…Some sort of conclusion.

Ross' mind began to mobilize once more and as the world fell back into place his mind held onto one question after his talk with Phoebe:

"When did Friday nights become Latin?"

The scenes of his walk with Phoebe played back in his mind; but he was still incapable of ordered logic, so his memory played the events back in reverse.

Like old footage rewinding, Ross saw himself dark and tall walking backwards with a beautifully glowing Phoebe. Their faces were construing into odd faces from backwards conversation.

Then as if his mind suddenly remembered the volume, the voices in distorted dialogue entered the crisp fall air.

The playback Ross, with his face going from confusion to laughter asked; "mean you do what?"

Phoebe walking backwards stated: "Fun be must nights Friday!"

Ross struggled in his mind to correct the dialogue, to remember coherently. He squinted his eyes and focused; "what did Phoebe say?"

Suddenly playback was corrected as a jogger flew by present Ross.

Dialogue resurrected itself with familiarity of normal speech patterns.

"Friday nights must be fun for you and Rachel"

"Pheebs, I never see Rach on Friday nights"

"okay man of intrigue, down play the romance"

"Wha.. Pheebs I lecture late on Friday's and Rachel stays with Emma"

"Ross, I helped her pick out the latin dress, I think its adorable you guys still date"

"Phoebe, Rachel and I don't see one another Friday nights"

"oh.."

As Phoebe discerned Ross was seriously unaware of what she was talking about she became nervous and started to look away. Across the trees to their left squirrels were assaulting passer bys with an array of nuts, figs, and various pieces of bark.

The wind shifted direction and Phoebe was forced to wrap her scarf tighter around her neck. She attempted to walk faster but Ross gently put his hand on her shoulder and thus was the end of her great escape.

She was trapped and she knew it.

Phoebe knew she unwittingly caught Rachel in a lie…but for her it didn't matter what it was, she just didn't want to be caught in the middle of Ross and Rachel. They've been so happy…so secure.

"Pheebs?" Ross' voice crashed into her thoughts and brought back her hesitation.

"Ross I'm sorry, I'm guess I misunderstood. When I ran into Rachel in the store, I helped her pick out a dress for dancing…but now that I think about it…I'm sure she didn't say anything about Fridays. It was just a dress for any special occasion"

"phoebe…" Ross' intonation shifted and for the first time in a long time he sounded insecure.

"Sorry Ross, but I've gotta go, I want to have a few errands done before Mike gets back home…we're still trying to have …ya know"

Phoebe's heart was breaking as she began to walk away from Ross; leaving him with alone in the company of a lie.

She remembered clearly now how nervous Rachel seemed when Phoebe ran into her that day. She knew with certainty that Rachel had told her dress was for dancing Friday nights.

For the past two months Phoebe would sometimes baby-sit Emma Friday nights while Rachel went out. But know that she was forced to think about it, Rachel never said the dancing was with Ross, she had just assumed. Phoebe stared straight ahead…her mind turning with disbelief.

What was Rachel doing? Her throat was dry and the back of her neck burned from the now restraining scarf. She tore it off as she sped down the path and out of the park.

Before Ross could find enough coherent words Phoebe was gone.

He felt that old tinge of paranoia bordering the perimeters of his thoughts. He tried to force it back. He wanted to think about his upcoming lecture, politics, anything. He sat on a park bench and let the cold wind attack his exposed face.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but he ignored it. He was directing his thoughts by force to think about anything but Rachel.

Yet somewhere in his thoughts between gas prices and fossilization there it was again, that relentless question, a Pandora's box with promises of injury;

"When did Friday nights become Latin?"


	8. The War of Silence

The War of Silence

It is the residue of wars concluded and wars yet to be commenced.

It is simultaneously the calm before the storm and the finality of death.

It is also inevitable.

Conflicts emerge flirting with various forms.

The silence between friends with nothing left to say.

When everything stops silence dances through buildings and open spaces, through families and nations.

Across the deserts of humanity and streets of New York.

A war between friends is an elusive mêlée to define. It exists without definite beginnings or end. Which word was it that beset conflict? Over which cup of coffee were both -parties offended? When did the phone calls settle into polite efforts.

A war between friends is difficult to define.

Uncultivated passions rise up as swords are drawn and no one is exempt from the fatality of harsh words, or even worse silence.

An apartment building, among thousands of others, was the unfortunate setting of such a conflict.

The war of silence.

Three individuals sat within Joey's dark apartment, casting three shadows which were fading into black , as unfamiliar, and as undistinguishable as twilight, while the sun fell from the sky slowly and painfully.

The red glow of the room was fading into a tainted gray and then an unforgiving black.

Each individual clung to the refuge of their separate chairs and sofas.

Rachel and Joey faced each other, without making eye contact, on opposite chairs with a small coffee table in between them.

Friends once so familiar and so distinct….were no more accustomed to each other than the millions of others dancing through New York's streets.

So there it was the inevitable calm before the storm. A tense and suffocating silence.

The apartment's living room was engulfed in its void.

Random sounds of human existence pierced through the room periodically but silence always returned.

A cab sounding. Joey's deep breath.

An angry neighbor.

The symphonic backdrop of New York continuing on with so much familiarity and so removed from their current reality.

It's the oddest thing…silence is during difficult times…when interrupted by ordinary sounds. It's a humbling experience to hear the world go on when your life is slowly falling apart. For Joey and Rachel, bombs exploding and buildings toppling would have been more acceptable sounds.

But the sounds promising the world's continuation, despite the lives of these individuals, were almost unbearable as the silence.

A dog barking. An infant cries.

The window kept swallowing these sounds from the street whole. The apartment allowed them to reverberate and digest loudly in the ears of its occupants.

Until there it was again…that suffocating silence.

A trash can clashes onto the street below…but then….there's another sound.

Faint but close.

Desperate but pronounced .

So soft it may not have been heard if Joey and Rachel hadn't been starving for it.

It is crying in the most defeated sense. It is more tragic than crying.

It explodes the void of silence in the room. Two of the individuals sitting the in the living room look toward the figure in the middle of the couch.

A small frame wrapped in a robe, fighting against her own shadow to exist.

Monica.

Rachel had been in Joey's apartment for five minutes in this battle of silence.

Five minutes of words, actions, and apologies that had been allowed to be murdered and buried by silence.

Now they were being resurrected through her tears.

Words would come.

Joey's grimaced expression , as he held onto a glass of water, was a confusing mixture of guilt and anger. Rachel lowered her gaze from the ceiling to glance at his features.

His face was gaunt and bitter with conflict.

Rachel knew Joey, despite his profession as an actor, was incapable of masking strong emotions.

The fan swirling cool air throughout the room did nothing to alleviate her adrenaline. Rachel decided Joey's face betrayed his façade of innocence.

His expression told her that her suspicions were legitimate, however Monica's crying validated them.

Rachel looked across the floor avoiding eye contact with her two best friends.

And there it was.

The most blatant accusation.

A confession lying on the floor with an unforgiving harshness.

Monica's white underwear.

Lying next to the coffee table. Inches from Hugsy. A foot from Monica's shoes. Miles away from her house, where they belonged.

Years past forgiveness.

Oh God.

Monica.

Rachel was frozen by the single piece of fabric and the infidelities it announced.

Oh God.

She finally brought her eyes up steadily . Her hands tightly wrapped around her arms laying against her dark denim blue jeans. Her fitting white t-shirt incapable of concealing the goose bumps emerging along her arms.

Her eyes first settled on Joey.

First, Joey's black shoes, laces untied, no socks.

Her eyes climbing steadily to his pants, wrinkled and worn.

His red shirt, despite all intensive purposes, had failed to be buttoned properly, and where buttons weren't altogether missing, they were completely overlooked.

Rachel fiercely tore her eyes away and settled on the television instead.

There was this astounding sense of injury by her two friends.

They're actions…

Rachel's mind couldn't even manage to describe the betrayal.

How could they do this to Chandler?

How could they do this to themselves?

It wasn't just the immature consequence of an already failing marriage. Or the distance that had grown between two former best friends. It was the fatal assault against the legacy of six friends.

The murder of 12 years of trust.

Each individual knew that the accusations scattered across the floor in this room were indefensible.

Years past forgiveness.

A thousand words, thoughts, and phrases drifted aimlessly above them in the stale air. The fan spinning them around above their heads; dancing through the air. Rachel looked towards the ceiling, drawing long slow breaths. Which thought?

Which phrase was the right one?

Which emotion was right now? Was it anger?

No. Everything's too fragile for anger. Disappointment maybe…

wait no…there it is….the thought that just flew by…normalcy. Polite normalcy seemed like a beginning, not quite denial but not a blaring accusation either.

Rachel found the casual words and delivered them carefully:

"Hey guys Phoebe is playing down there, so unless you guys want to talk, we should probably go see her."

More Silence…but Joey was growing restless now. His feet were shifting back and forth across the floor.

A strong coarse voice emerged from Joey's shadow, "yeah Rachel, I don't think we're going so…"

Rachel focused on Joey and nodded her head slowly.

She was attempting to control the suppressed anger building inside and seeping out slowly between her words. But suddenly she didn't care. She shed her mask of normalcy and went straight for the truth:

"What is this?"

It came out so suddenly that Joey and Monica actually had to process her question. Yet once Joey understood, he reacted so uncharacteristically, so vehemently that for the first time ever in their friendship, Rachel felt resentment.

Without the pretense of confusion or politeness Joey forcefully stated, "Leave".

His tone was flirting dangerously close to yelling.

From this moment on silence was once again utterly defeated.

Joey got up and begin to walk across the apartment to open the door.

Monica's head remained buried in her arms lost in the shadows of the sofa.

Rachel stood up barely in control her anger, "What the hell is that Joey? No defense?"

"You don't know a damn thing Rachel…"

"It's pretty damn obvious Joey" She spurted back gesturing towards the underwear. Joey's eyes followed her hand to the floor and grew wide when they reached the destination. He jerked his head towards the window, his jaw set.

Monica sobs increased heavily from the sofa in between Joey and Rachel who were both standing facing one another.

Rachel's attention was diverted back to Monica.

"Monica I know I don't understand exactly what's been going on between you and Chandler but I know he doesn't deserve this. This isn't revenge Monica. This is malicious."

Joey stepped forward but Rachel didn't move.

"That's enough Rachel"

Threatening isn't the right terminology to describe Joey's demeanor; its resemblance was more like an old dog forced to bark, to say something, despite the fight already being lost. He was obviously tired and his voice flickered in and out of his usual baritone.

Rachel whispered back a hoarse "no"

"okay Rach you wanna do this…we can do this" his eyes flickering with passion .

"Fine" she stated a little more resolutely. She shifted her weight as if to prepare for the worse. Joey continued to stand still.

"It's not what it looks like…and I expect you of all people to hear us out first…"

Frustration flew out of Rachel, "that's irrelevant don't make me the enemy"

Joey's strained voice interrupted.

"This is killing us Rach. So please just 15 seconds without your accusations. I've done nothing but listen to her. That's all."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "oh come on Joey"

Joey voice evolved to shouting.

"Damn it. I don't care what you think. We talked. That's your big infidelity and its a hell of a lot more than you or Chandler can say you've done for her. Nothing happened. It could have. But nothing did. We were close…she was vulnerable…I was lonely…clothes were removed…but nothing more. We stopped…Monica hasn't stopped crying. Save the lecture, at the end of the day you don't know a damn thing about last night Rach"

Rachel met Joey's stare sternly. "I know as Chandler's best friend you shouldn't have gone this far"

Joey stared at her for a few fleeting seconds with bitterness before his guilt tore him away. That was it…his Achilles' heel. His eyes were watered and empty as he gazed out of the window.

"You're right…but I guess who knows Chandler better than you these days"

"What the hell does that mean Joey"

"seriously Rach?"

Rachel hesitated. "Yes"

"How long have we known Chandler? In his best and his worse he would never hurt a female, especially one of his best friends"

Monica had told him about last night.

Beyond frustrated Rachel exclaimed through clinched teeth" One. You don't know what happened….I don't care what Monica said. Two. I never said he knew what he was doing Joey"

"No! I don't care if he was drunk or high or insane. He would never take advantage unless there was reason"

"Damn you Joey…is that what Monica told you? That I provoked him" Rachel turned almost violently toward Monica, her hair flying behind her.

"Monica…enough…look at me"

"leave her alone"

"Joey shut up…Monica look at me"

"I know you know what happened that night. I know you know he was intoxicated and made a mistake. Nothing was provoked or enticed."

Joey warned slowly. "Rachel…"

"Five minutes alone…please"

Joey and Rachel were about to recommence arguing when a small voice emerged from the sofa.

"I don't know what I know anymore"

Rachel and Joey both paused. Rachel's mouth fell open.

Joey recovered first and cautioned Monica. " You don't have to talk about this Mon" .

"It's fine. 5 minutes Joey."

Joey nodded slowly and headed towards the front door. He grabbed his coat from the counter and left the apartment without a word. And then there was nothing but silence.

Rachel sat down beside Monica on the sofa, her blue eyes searching Monica's facial features. Probing with her eyes for some semblance of the old Monica, so vivacious and beautiful. Years of stress, death, and alcohol had taken their inevitable toll and yet her eyes were still radiantly sharp.

Rachel shifted her weight against the pillows and felt the bump of her phone settled in the back of her jeans. Suddenly she remembered Ross with Mike and Phoebe.

She excused herself to the bathroom and called Ross to let him know that she was sorry and she'd be late.

When she entered the room again she turned on a soft nearby lamp, took a deep breath and resettled herself by Monica.

She noticed that Monica had not moved an inch and was still staring into space.

Her hair was long and untamed, falling in tangled waves against the blanket around her shoulders. She was still hauntingly gorgeous.

Rachel spoke first. "Mon…nothing happened between--"

"--I know" Monica interrupted softly. "I'm sorry".

"I am too" Rachel said thoughtfully.

Monica took in a deep breath. "All of this…its just too much. I knew Chandler wouldn't…I think…I was just looking for an escape"

" Mon"

"this has been my life. Searching for an escape for the last year and a half. Maybe even before."

Monica squinted her eyes while Rachel just listened. something she had been too busy to do for too long.

"I just-- knew the new house, the family, was it. That was supposed to be my life, filled with laughter and lunches and PTA meetings. But everything was just so much when it became a reality. Somewhere between manicured lawns and changed diapers we lost ourselves."

Monica paused suddenly.

"This is going to sound so selfish"

Rachel intervened. "This is honesty. It's okay. Everyone has felt like this"

Tears began to swell in Monica's sharp blue eyes again.

"I just couldn't take it anymore. The redundancy. The exhaustion. So when the twins passed , you know what the worse part was, it wasn't just the grief or depression. It was this twinge, this slight release. Liberation from the suburbs…it was the worse revelation to make."

"oh Mon"

"So in between grieving and guilt Chandler and I lost ourselves even more. It's no secret alcohol was a weak escape for me. That or yelling at Chandler. God, Rach I am such a failure. In so many ways. How did everything change so much?"

"Oh Sweetie…no…its okay. Mon, sometimes failure, even the most suburban American dream kind of failure, is something we have to experience."

"Rach.." Monica's face was drained and tired. Yet something was stirring beneath her eyes. Then in unexpected movement, she lightly hugged Rachel. "it's okay you don't have to excuse my actions."

Rachel put a hand on her shoulder and forced her eye contact.

"No because without failure, without shortcomings, without loss, nobody ever gains, no one wins or rises above. It's a balance. An unfortunate, difficult, beautiful, and tragic balance…because life exists because of death…love because of hate… and vice versa"

Monica took a deep breath and clung to Rachel even tighter…her tears were slowing.

Rachel breathed in slowly, "We've just had so many beautiful years, of laughter, of friendship…that this is our balance. This isn't your personal failure Monica. This is life."

"So for every broken alcoholic there's what Rach…"

"There's a beautiful tiny slightly neurotic competitive woman who likes to clean"

Slight smile.

"there's a sober and hopeful future Mon"

Monica pulled away from Rachel and stared at her for a few seconds. She grabbed her hand and uttered the most sincere "I'm sorry for all this, but thank you for…you… right now".

Rachel eyes were promising tears but she was determined to hold them back for now at least…instead she smiled, "Try simpler cries of attention next time Mon"

"I know. I swear there is still a needy, insecure overweight girl inside of me"

A few more minutes passed in silence while two best friends were reintroduced to one another by a long embrace.

"Okay…here's my key"

"wha.." Monica exclaimed breathlessly.

"My mom's bringing Emma back in half an hour so if you wouldn't mind being there to take her…here's my key…I'm not sure when Ross will be back" Monica stretched out an unsure hand, resistant of the responsibility.

"Sure trust isn't an issue?"

"Mon it's fine"

"Why aren't you coming?"

"Because I've got to resolve this with Joey…if you'll put Emma to sleep".

"Rach of course"

"okay just make sure you get everything you need from here first…you're staying for however long you need"

"oh…no… Rach"

"Monica you and I both know the Monica alone in the suburbs plan sucks…stay with us…please"

"it won't be for long"

"That's okay."

Rachel smiled and squeezed her hand.

Monica got up and put on her old clothes in the bathroom. What was left over she put within a small plastic bag.

Pieces being picked up and collected across the cluttered floor and placed into the neat , simple interior of a bag.

Fragments of her life finally gaining a sense of purpose, a sense of progress….even if for now it was barely held together by the contents of plastic.


	9. A Subway Without a Destination

Hey guys, I apologize for the lag in updates. No excuses. I will just try harder.Inspiration can be elusive. along with motivation. But still as always try to enjoy this feeble attempt a literature and of course...review.

* * *

Subway without a Destination

The sounds of metal fighting with speed and electricity sounded loudly in the small compartment car of a New York subway.

Ross stood with his weight against the door holding on to a greasy metal pole resurrected from the floor offering support for his balance and not much else.

"I'm fine"

The phrase illuminated the dark thought process of his mind as he tries not to think about…

There her name is again. He grimaces as though in physical pain.

"I'm fine"

It's not a comfort. It's the kind of lie our mind whispers to our heart out of sheer desperation.

The act of trying to convince his mind that he is fine is like a satellite in space trying to send some desperate signal to a radio tower on earth with its reception dying. A strange combination of futility mixed sparingly with hope.

The yellowish light cast in the subway car gave off the surreal feeling of a day dream. The occasional bumps in the track allowed for reality to come crashing in intermittently.

"What the hell is he looking at?"

Ross angrily threw his gaze harshly against a man opposite his pole that hadn't stopped staring at him.

A man obviously an embittered refugee of New York's war against poverty just looking for attention. His clothes, torn and worn, made him look more threatening than he probably was and yet all the same Ross was growing increasingly aggravated at the man's unrelentingly glare.

Today was not the day.

Almost violently Ross tore off his coat and emptied the five dollars and 30 cents from his wallet. He shook his possessions at man stating firmly. "Is this what you want? HERE. What kinda problems could a guy dressed like me have right? You're bitter I understand…HERE?"

Ross fiercely clinched his jaw ready for the man to take the money and run.

After the initial shock left, the man's response had something to do with a middle finger, a grunt and eventually meandering toward the other end of the car; no doubt to passively aggressively attack some other product of New York's middle class.

"Nice…" calm down Ross. Any other day he probably would have smiled at the guy and sparked a conversation, maybe even pretentiously offered a buck or two, but today was an exception.

The subway grinded to a stop as a platform flew into view. The man with the trigger middle finger walked slowly out of the electric doors, giving Ross one final death stare.

Shifting his feet against the dirty rubber flooring, Ross turned his back and stared at the yellow lights flashing once again past the windows, piercing the darkness of the tunnel.

Where was he going?

He didn't have a damn clue. It didn't matter.

Another variety of passengers stepped into the subway car; a peculiar human cocktail of businessmen, college students, bohemians, and hobos, the kind only New York could concoct.

"Where am I going? No…I'm fine. I'll just go home. No. What was she thinking?"

There it was again… the circle of rationale, leading him unrelentingly back to Rachel. Her eyes. Her skin. Her hair. Her laugh. Her stomach. Her warmth. Her thighs. All of these potentially being shared with someone else…

When did Fridays become Latin?

He gripped the pole and tried to get himself to calm down.

He had come so far in these last few years…to slip back into jealousy, and anger, was more than psychological regression…it was dangerous.

He had a family now. He had Emma and in her, her mother's smile. He would have to make this work, whatever Rachel is doing….even if it's….

Damn Emma's smile.

Ross knew he had to handle this carefully. He breathed in slowly, inhaling the thick metallic recycled air. He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck wondering what came next, ruffling the back of his hair in the process.

Suddenly the compartment shook violently.

A deafening screech roared from the wheels and reverberated violently throughout the tunnel.

Screams escaped from the passengers losing their balance.

Everyone in the compartment flew forwards towards the windows, seats, and walls slamming into them, helpless victims to momentum, speed, and force.

Ross' reflexes quickly reacted enabling him to grab the nearest poll. He grabbed an older woman's arm to help her catch her balance right as she was falling towards the floor.

Somehow he maintained his rough footing. Rapid fire thoughts flew threw his mind. Terrorism? Electrical malfunction? Divine Intervention?

The collective gasps from the other passengers were barely audible over the noise of metal clashing.

Ross felt a body fall into his back.

By the time he recovered, the car had roughly jerked back on track.

The screeching ceased and they were once again smoothly gliding through the tunnel. The incident seemed like a glitch in time.

An intercom nearby crackled on, and through the static. The voice of the conductor apologized for some obstruction on the track.

"That's odd" said a familiar voice behind him.

"Yeah…"

Ross' instantly knew the voice.

Because it belonged to the body that had fallen into his back.

And it was now clear that the body belonged to someone wonderfully familiar to him.

A cup of coffee, conversation at 3 a.m., lie in bed with all day, dance in front of naked kind of familiar, and all the other privileges memory can provide when encountering a former girlfriend.

Ross smiled gently to himself. For the first time in his Jewish upbringing, Ross had to admit. There was a savior. And her name was…

Charlie.


	10. The Contrievance of Electrical Stars

"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You-- you alone-- will have the stars as no one else has them--"

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

_The Little Prince_

"God…it is so beautiful up here…I think I had forgotten"

"Yeah…sometimes it's easy to forget the simple things"

"It's getting cold…"

The silhouettes of Phoebe and Monica were contrasting brilliantly with the luminance of New York's night.

A thousand man made lights humming consistently around them. Central Park, The Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Rockefeller Center all within the city's living canvas, echoing decades of time and devotion.

Some corporate office spaces were shutting their lights out. Exit lights in hallways maintained their steady presence, giving off a green or red glow through immaculate glass windows.

New York was casting a thousand electrical stars representing a thousand different things to a thousand different people. New York has been dancing on American soil for a while.

The whole city was gloriously stunning and constantly shifting from up on the roof top above Ross and Rachel's apartment, while two good friends linked arms offering support while looking over the ledge.

Rachel had returned to the apartment about ten minutes ago and while Monica left to get some fresh air. She ran into Phoebe in the hallway, who was on her way to see Ross. Welcoming the warm surprise Phoebe fell into Monica's company at least until Ross arrived.

"Mon…"

"Yes"

"You've been changing the subject ever since we got up here. It's one question. Do you?"

Monica glanced at her best friend nostalgically and with a slight smile emerging on her face she replied slowly.

"Okay. I suppose I know were I could start. He smelled like lilac…it's the oddest thing…but that's what I remember…I guess it was a few months ago...he uh…he does this thing every day, since the funeral for the twins…"

Phoebe listened on intently.

"He would come home after work, I'm sure he was exhausted and…"

Monica lowered her head and her demeanor seemed to drift back into resignation. Her breaths were becoming deeper. Yet Phoebe pressed on gently.

"And what Mon"

"Exhausted and defeated, not just from work, but from me. Anything I could do to make him feel guilty. To makehim the enemy. I did…But any way…he would come home and he would leave a single lily on the kitchen counter for me. It was one of three. The other two went to the graves… and this is what he did everyday until last Monday"

Phoebe shook her head slowly. "I never knew that"

"He never talked about it. He just always did it... So when he came home Monday night drunk and miserable...without one…it's so stupid…because I knew eventually it would probably happen…but when it did …I just…I…couldn't breathe. I hated every part of me that kept pushing him away and yet I couldn't stop. Everything had to be someone else's fault. I even hated you guys. I couldn't even touch Emma or Ben or any children. Being around Ross and Rachel was… everything I had dreamed of had deteriorated right in front of me…"

"Mon we knew it was hard for you...no one took any of it personally…except Joey a little"

"Joey?"

"Well because he didn't want you and Chandler to move in the first place…and for everything to happen so quickly, and for you guys to not find happiness. It killed him. Ithink it also destroyed his happily ever after. If you guys couldn't make it then, what chance did a thirty something year old bachelor have. He's been really lonely lately. Mike and I try to be there but we've got other worries too."

Monica nodded slowly. It was becoming easier to see why she and Joey had come so close to intimacy that night.

They needed something, anything so desperately that for a few minutes consequences didn't exist. Would Chandler ever forgive her? Did she want to be forgiven? Question marks punctuated over sadness and regret.

Whatever Monica felt about the situation…she regretted hurting everyone so deeply.

Phoebe inquired sadly, "So the answer to my question is 'no' the lily was some kind of confirmation Chandler stopped loving you and so you no longer love him"

"No, it sounds crazy, when you say that, but maybe that's because this whole situation is crazy" Monica let out a forced laugh behind her words. She paused awkwardly and then tried to explain. "No. The absence of a lily was a confirmation for me that I still loved him. Despite this person I've become. When he came home without his gesture, his symbol of love, I didn't expect it to hurt me…but it killed me. I was so miserable that I pushed away the love of my life."

"Oh Monica…"

"I think that's why I was even in the kitchen when he came home. I'm always waiting to see when he stops trying…when we die."

"So the answer is 'Yes!""

Monica smiled at Phoebe's excitement. The contrived electrical stars of New York City shining off her face making her look absolutely gorgeous.

"Yes. Phoebe, not that I deserve it, but I love him so much and I'm willing to do anything to make this work."

"Monica, that's…that's more than I hoped for. It's incredible….Yay!" Phoebe did a slight jump into the air and embraced Monica in a long hug.

"Wait Pheebs" Monica pried her self away.

"This isn't going to be easy. I mean I have to be honest with him. I have to honest with myself before any thing can happen. I mean what happened with Joey…could kill him."

"But nothing happened…"

"Pheebs we were too close. We went too far. There's no excuse." Monica exclaimed breathlessly while Phoebe eventually nodded with consent.

The cold Atlantic wind become to pick up as it danced across the softly lit rooftop, chilling Monica and Phoebe.

Through shivering Monica uttered almost inaudibly "There's just one thing I can't figure out."

"What's that?"

"What was his escape? I mean alcohol was definitely mine…but besides Monday night Chandler rarely ever indulged himself. I just can't imagine someone going through what we've been through and not having an outlet. Especially with me notbeing there really.Something…some…one" Monica eyes watered…too hesitant to cry in the cold draft.

Phoebe sighed heavily. Here it was …the moment she was waiting for. She had already experienced this moment earlier with Ross underneath the leaves of Central Park and now with his sister in the glow of New York's electrical stars.

Beautiful settings, devastating truths and always that gut feeling that she knew more than she should.

She was hoping Monica wouldn't see it. That Ross would forget it. She knew neither were possible.

Monica was silent for so long that Phoebe just came forward with what they were both dreading.

"You'reafraid it was an affair aren't you"

"No, yes, I mean I don't know. I'm sure he wouldn't…I'm pretty sure he still loves me…it's just…"

Phoebe questioned reluctantly, "It's just what Mon?"

Part of her already knew the answer. She had put it together when Charlie hadcalled her earlier, right after she had left Ross and Central Perk.

As a charming ex girlfriend of Ross, after breaking up with her Nobel Prize winning boyfriend again, the six of them had accepted her into their tight group as another New Yorker confused by love about a half a year ago.

With Ross and Rachel being so in love, there was never any awkwardness in Charlie's presence. By now each an every one of them considered her a good friend.

Especially Joey, who everyone could see still, had feelings for her. However, his hesitation about love and Monica and Chandler kept him from ever approaching her again with the idea of a future.

Phoebe's mind regressed back to their quick conversation on the phone. She remembered she had just stepped onto a subway to get home. She couldn't wait to just be with Mike.

Her was hair swiftly shifting back and forth behind her long coat as she tried to push Ross out of her mind, along with their walk in Central Park.

"Okay, wait a minute Charlie" Phoebe exclaimed with agitation as she lowered her cell phone from her ear.

"Burt don't you give that passive aggressive stare to me. It's me Phoebe. I TAUGHT YOU THAT STARE!"

Burt sulked away, ashamed, to another corner in the train.

"Sorry Charlie that was just subway Burt"

"oh…okay…" Charlie said confused and not sure how to continue. Somehow she found her words, "Well Pheebs, I'm just saying that he was drinking really hard and he was completely alone…I'm really worried about him"

That Monday, after work Charlie had run into Chandler at a small pub not to far from NYU's main campus.They sometimes hung out their after work because its closer to them than CentralPerk.

"I know…Monica seems to be okay…quieter, maybe even brooding, but fine. Chandler does look like he's carrying so much weight still" Phoebe stated slowly.

"….yeah…I guess…but you know what the strangest part was. Albeit he was intoxicated but he kept saying the weight will be off soon. He kept laughing and saying everything was going to be over and done with."

"Oh my God…Charlie you mean like suicide"

"No…that's what I thought at first…but I managed to get him to tell me he had talked to Ross about divorcing Monica and that what he didn't tell Ross was that he could finally stop lying to Monica…"

Phoebe fell into a subway seat, inches away from a used Pepsi can, in complete shock.

"Phoebe I …I think Chandler's been having an affair"

The phrase 'oh my God' swirled through Phoebe's thoughts suffocating any of the brains other functions. The speed of the subway increased her adrenaline and made her feel uncharacteristically nauseated.

The passengers around her turned into blurs of color, as she struggled to find another answer, another possibility. Then her mind clicked and a truth so disturbingly clear sat right down in front of her. She gasped as the answers fell into place in her mind. And the only thing she could think was that it was so obvious…

How did she not see this earlier? She had just spoken with Rachel earlier over the phoneabout Chandler's uncharacteristic behavior.

Now she stood with Monica on a New York rooftop, a few short feet a way from a ledge, there was no reasonable room for escape now that Monica had finally started to question Chandler's secrecy.

Another electrical light near them began to flicker untilit shut off completely. Another shade of darkness fell upon them. Phoebe began to feel relieved…maybe they could just go back inside and change the subject.

Phoebe attempted to direct Monica to follow her back inside and lighten the mood. "Well as sexy as this is, it's cold and I prefer the lights on. So why don't we head…"

And then there it was….a single question delivered with subtlety.

Monica, who was looking out towards the skyline, turned to Phoebe, her face burrowed with deep contemplation.

"Pheebs…"

"…Yes" she replied, sadness filling everything within her soul; tears reluctantly beginning to form behind her once playful eyes.

Monica's eyes widened.

"The strangest thing was he used smell like pepper and sweat some nights.I never knew why...butI could tell from the laundry...and it happened often ...yes I remember its every..." she trailed off as her mind was wrapping around the theory.

Phoebe finished it for her. The truth was burning in her mouth. "Its every Friday night isn't Mon."

Barely able to speak Mon gave a weak, "yes"

There it is.

Phoebe stood in solemn silence, while Monica's blue eyes searched her face desperately for some answer hidden within her expression.

Another light flickered out on the rooftop leaving one left, and nearly completely abandoning Monica and Phoebe to the darkness of the roof.

The problem with the lies we tell and the electrical stars we contrive, is that sometimes we depend on them so desperately, that when they perish we're left with nothing but the company of darkness and the remnants of what they meant to us.

There it is again. The constant remnant left behind, whispered into the air. The question mark otherwise know as"Friday nights..."


	11. The Dreams of a White Russian

**The Perfect Ending **

**Taken in context**

**It's not a bad thing**

**But when you start to**

**Pick it apart **

**It gets so depressing**

**It's that sort of thing that makes you think too much**

**It's that sort of thing that makes you lose your objectivity**

**So if you made it…**

**Just be glad that you did **

**And stay there **

**If you ever feel loved or needed**

**Remember that your one of the lucky ones**

**And if it's over**

**Just remember what I told ya **

**It was bound to happen so just**

**Keep moving on**

**There's no perfect ending **

**You peel back the layers**

**And get down to the inside**

**But sometimes you lose sight**

**Of what it was you were trying to find**

**Straylight Run **

The band's distinctive soulful performance with melodic tones and acoustic rock drifted from the stage, through the depths of the crowd, reaching the soft lit corner where Chandler sat.

There a mixed glass of Greygose and kahlua, called a White Russian, was staining the napkin under it.

He kept the drink carefully between his hands.

Soft orange lights, fighting against a dark wall paper, shadowed his tired face.His mind was blank with sadness and defeat.

Once again another waitress offered up polite conversation into the air, half obligated because of profession and half because of pity. She offered Chandler another drink on the house.

Unfortunately for her he didn't take well, these last few days especially, to obligatory kindness.

He shoved his nearly empty glass towards her hands and muttered a quick "no thanks".

Sensing no movement, Chandler shot off a look that jolted her back into her routine of forced kindness with others around the bar looking for the comfort of alcohol or human interaction.

She quickly found another target in some pathetic John corporate yuppie in an expensive suit bemoaning the promotion he didn't get sooner because of affirmative action measures.

It was that kind of bar. Real polished…from the interior to the customers…hard on the wallet.

A wallet which Chandler wasn't even sure he brought.

It's the kind of place suits searched for sympathy along with a scotch.

The only reason average Joes ever ventured in here was either because they were from out of town or they were here for the music.

That is the one thing about this bar separating it from so many other New York night life business endeavors.

They had great music every night. Under the elitist pretense of being a hang out for wealthy artists and indie types of course, but all the same they brought in great bands.

Chandler glanced toward the stage.

An up and coming group named Straylight Run occupied its wooden floor.

He had never heard of them but already they had forced their lyrics into his chest and burned his soul quicker than the vodka:

**Down on hands and knees**

**Choking grasping spit**

**I just can't make good on any of**

**These promises**

**Then he asked me …what does that mean **

**What's another word for desperate? **

It was like a mass destruction site within his mind as the lyrics prodded around with sticks shifting the ash, lifting up the debris of metal and concrete, and lifting up charred memories from the earth.

Chandler's mind burned with the memory of that night he attacked Rachel. How he cowered on the floor in insufferable desperation, searching for anything and everything resembling love.

He could kill himself for that night.

Two women that had been his best friends for over twelve years now suffered because of his lack of control, lack of reason,

'God' he thought, 'I must have been insane…'

The band went off into another melody

**When the sun came up**

**We were sleeping in**

**Sunk inside of blankets**

**Sprawled across the bed**

**Anyway, we're dreaming **

Chandler's mind feel deep thought again. Once again the lyrics were searching through destruction until…until there were two soft mounds of grass. He braced himself for the memory and closed his eyes in concentration, tears fighting behind his red eyelids.

It had the surrealist quality of dream and yet the emotions conveyed realism beyond any he had ever known.

He wasn't sure if he was conscious anymore.

New York sat in a dusted grey color all around him, rubble and destruction. And then he looked at the oasis of grass beneath his feet…and the beautiful woman lying on the two subtle mounds.

She was crying desperately and uncontrollably. She had thrown her body over the mounds of her two children. He didn't know where she found the air because he was certain she couldn't breathe, but in a hoarse whisper her red face and sharp blue eyes tore into Chandler.

"This isn't going to get better is it? Wanting to die isn't going to go away is it? This pain….?"

This feels too real he thought not wanting to remember anymore but unable to leave her gaze.

Chandler panicked. He never knew what to say in normalcy let alone tragedy. God what could he say?

He offered honesty, "I don't know Monica"

Then she let out a deep scream unrecognizable from her small frame. She fell back into the soft grass, sobbing once more.

Chandler still numb and unable to cry, "tell me what to do…I can't…you can't be like this…we'll get through it, you always know what to do, tell me anything Mon and I'll do it"

Minutes, hours, days passed by and they remained where they were. The sky was changing into a strange blackish blue.

Finally Monica looked at him and said quietly, "make it better"

He croaked at the impossibility of it, "what!""

Monica yelled, "Make this better, and make me feel like I'm not dying, I need to feel something else, anything else"

Her body was shaking and at the sight of this Chandler fell to his knees, his black suit picking up the soft green grass.

Instinctively his arms encircled Monica. She was still whimpering "make it better" as she fell into his arms.

More worry entered his heart as he felt how much weight she had lost.

God I won't lose her.

He clung to her, pressing his cheek into hers, and then he finally began to cry slowly.

Just two weeks before this moment they were sunk inside of white sheets, sleeping in for the weekend and making love. Chandler prepared some concoction he termed a romantic dinner and with two glasses of fine wine they toasted, their children were finally showing signs of promise in their health.

Now life had lost all direction.

He was clouded by failure and debris.

Feeling Monica's body continuing to sob uncontrollably, he did the only thing he knew how that could always help her feel better in the past.

He kissed her face once and then a thousand times all over, giving every ounce of love he had ever felt in his life until he was drained too.

Monica's body was still now. She closed her eyes and her weariness gradually took hold. She fell asleep.

Chandler picked her up carefully, her raven long hair falling over his arms. The memory should have ended with him walking across the graveyard back to their car.

Instead when he turned to walk once again there was nothing but destruction for miles and miles. Smoke and heat radiating from the ground, ash suffocating his lungs, and for a while he was overcome with defeat. He sat down with Monica still in his arms.

He knew he would never let go. He looked back at the mound which was now covered in debris too. With the hot air swirling around him intensifying by the second, he glanced down a Monica; her face was calm and beautiful.

She was always the strong one...now it was his turn.

He looked towards the horizon to his left and stood up carefully.

He loved her so much.

Then he took a step into infinity, and whatever infinity promised, holding the greatest love he had ever known in the delicate balance of his arms.

**There are moments when, **

**When I know it ends**

**The world revolves around us**

**And we're keeping it**

**It keeps it all going**

**This delicate balance**

**Vulnerable, all knowing**

The words pouring from the lead singer brought Chandler back into consciousness. He slowly lifted his head from the table and rubbed his forehead.

It's the oddest thing a sincere memory integrated with a dream.

His watch told him it was getting late, yet his gut told him the same in regards to finding Monica.

Whatever he was going to say to her he felt he had to say it now.

Nothing's promised.

Over his search for her these last few days, it was obvious that Joey had lied. She wasn't with her parents. Chandler didn't have to speculate why. Joey was just trying to protect her, which is what a best friend should do. Yet what hurt the most was that he protecting her from Chandler, it's nothing a best friend should have to do.

So he figured she'd most likely beat one of two places, Joey's or Ross', she definitely hadn't returned to their house. He checked…five times.

So he grabbed a few dollars from his pocket and threw them onto the table. He grabbed his wool coat and launched out of the door into New York City's night and for the first time in a long while he noticed all the lights his city wore while she stood boldly against the sky line.

'They're the best stars we've got' he thought

There's comfort in knowing…that if the end of everything were tomorrow, eventually we're capable of once more building our dreams made of electricity and stone.

Once he found her, he was never going give up again. He was ready to walk through the destruction of their marriage and carry her if he had too.

He's certain he knows how to make it better this time...to be stronger than before.

As he hailed a cab, he could still hear the band playing inside, a strong guitar rift giving a rush to his adrenaline.

**So we bottled and shelved**

**All the regrets**

**Let them ferment**

**And came back to our senses**

**Slept a few days**

**And laughed at how stupid we used to be**

**Mistakes we knew we're making**


	12. Touch New York: part I

A number of lights around the city were conceding to the late hour.

Crashing into black.

The windows of corporate offices darkened intermittently like the off beat measures of Mily Balakirev's operas; a spectacular finish to the white collared man's business.

The rooftop, on which Phoebe and Monica remained, was now faintly lit.

The soft ambiance was something like an old photograph dulled by waning memory; the russet brick, the thick air, and all the hues of New York's night.

Yellow and white and orange and blue smothered with the night's purplish glow.

Fifty feet below them, deep within the brick walled apartments, was another dim light, flickering against its demise; a small candle leaving behind the slight smell of burning cinnamon.

The room was small and dark. Small shadows danced across the nearby wall.

Heaven encapsulate.

The sound of strong water, crashing into the acrastone of the antique bathtub, echoes throughout the room; the smooth and thick porcelain-like bottom floods.

Steam erupts into existence, rising into the air, filling it with moisture.

Manufactured clouds.

Just as the tub swells with clear water, a hand swiftly turns a silver handle, narrowly avoiding an overflow onto the white tile below.

A petite manicured foot shifts and the white cinnamon candle falls to its death into the clear water.

The sound of contact between light and liquid splits the air and then a bursting whip of steam shoots upwards.

There's a process of inverse creation and after a flurry of action the small room is engulfed in darkness.

And thus, the apocalypse of the bathroom.

'So much for sanctuaries' thought a distracted Rachel, weaving her fingers through her hair as her impromptu haven turned pitch black.

'I could be a thousand yards away, above all this, wrapped in the darkness of the sky, away from the bricks, electricity, and people... So high a fall wouldn't even be suicidal, it would negate my existence. I could fade into microscopic matter…just for a little while'

She sighed deeply.

Cinnamon and steam and a bottle of herbal essence.

Lying in the tub, she rested…a tired bathroom existentialist, floating above New York.

Thoughts stumbling into her mind, too fast to understand. Flashes of years past too beautiful to forget. She felt as if she were on a translucent highway, thoughts racing towards her from all directions with bright headlights, narrowly avoiding a fatal collision.

"Damn, this is falling apart so quickly," she muttered aloud with no particular awareness of having done so.

The words fell to the tile floor and rebounded upwards into empty space.

Empty like Monica's apartment, empty like the coffee house, the kind of empty that is never right again.

She sat up…all of her weight pressing against her arms, bracing herself with her left hand, and using the right to push all of her damp hair over her left shoulder.

She sighed again. The steam was settling.

She stood up while drops of water fell way from her thin frame. As she stepped out of the antique tub, her feet left wet residue behind…

Rachel felt as if pieces of her soul were falling away from her…such intangible notions.

The existence of a soul. The loss of an existing soul.

A light flashed on with a steady hum of electricity and Rachel took her hand off of the light switch. Cheap glass and wire from China buzzed calmly, resurrecting the bathroom's liveliness.

Wiping the large glass mirror clear in front of her, in small hand motions her naked body came into view.

'Ross says I'm beautiful' she thought puzzlingly.

It was all the same routine. Her brow furrowed and wrinkles came into view. Her blue eyes traveled down her body, carefully and methodically. Noticing every familiar curve and scar until they focused on her face again.

She didn't see much of anything at all. Not anymore.

"Shit!" she exclaimed loudly as her foot accidentally collided with the ledge below the counter.

She stepped away from the mirror, while pain radiated through her nerves. As beads of water on her smooth skin continued to find their way to the floor, she eventually found a towel.

The steam faded into the air around her, but her body still felt hot all over, her face began to tingle then burn slightly, her hand attempted to rub her face to alleviate the uncomfortable tingling, yet the touch of her wedding band made it worse.

'To hell with metaphors….' She laughed out loud bitterly.

Her skin was scarlet, like the emblazoned color of roses, like Indonesian sunsets, like culpability.

The last effort of laughter choked in her throat. She bit her lip and felt the tears beginning to come.

She reached for a napkin.

And then… 'What's that sound' Rachel thought distractedly as her mind slowly processed a faint noise coming somewhere out of the dark. 'No…it's far away but…'

She paused in brief puzzlement before a rush of familiarity came to her.

Emma.

Emma crying.

Her deep thoughts were shattered and her immediate senses raced back to her.

The air suddenly gave her an uncomfortable chill.

Water still dripped from her as she entered her bedroom, dampening the white carpet underneath; the towel draped around her was failing hopelessly.

After grabbing her robe from the bed, she left the room and met her frantic four year old halfway in the living room.

Another monster chasing her out of her dreams…the kind adults fail to notice anymore, too engrossed now with tangible foes, such as taxes and in-laws.

There was a process of five more steps and then Emma was in the air, held tightly by her mother's arms.

Emma pulled her head away from Rachel's shoulders and forced the most dramatic fashion of eye contact a child could muster.

Stoutly she whispered. "He was yello." Tears bordered her wide eyes.

"Oh sweetie. It's okay. Yellow huh? That's strange…he must have tired of… what was Emms…grape?" Rachel mused.

"Yes" Emma nodded furiously and then distractedly glanced downward.

"Mommy?"

"Yes sweetie?"

"Why is your hand red?"

Rachel tensed, she had forgotten about her hand. Damn.

She smiled gently at Emma.

"It's just a scrape baby…the kind that happens when adults aren't too careful" she offered as they headed back towards Emma's room.

Curiosity satisfied, Emma's gorgeous eyes focused intently on her mother, saying as only a child who was convinced she was an adult could, "Mom, be more careful."

"Of course," Rachel replied with laughable self-importance.

As she placed Emma underneath her pink sheets to reconvene with her dreams, she felt the smallest hand reach up and touch her cheek.

Emma smiled and drifted off quickly until she was thousands of miles away.

Rachel smiled back and walked out of the doorway, blanketing innocence in the dark, with a swift hand motion against the light switch. The fairy lamp's green light extinguished.

"I love you Ems…so much"

She went to the kitchen sink and lifted her hand into the white light.

The makeshift bandages had unraveled irreparably.

A minute later blood was swirling through the facet water, burning bright red against the silver metal.

Dripping steadily from the palm of her hand as she cleaned around the wound.

Her mind kept repeating the same thoughts, oncoming headlights colliding, stating with certainty, 'That she deserved much more pain than this'

* * *

A few hours earlier at Joey's…

"Crash".

The sound of glass being murdered a thousand times over.

Joey came out of his room in a hurry, obviously worried the talk between Rachel and Monica had turned for the worst.

Rachel raised her hand in a gesture to stop him, "I just dropped my glass. I'm sorry"

Joey scanned the room for Monica, in her lack of presence; he assumed she had gone back into the second bedroom.

He eventually redirected his gaze back toward Rachel.

"You should just leave that….I'll get it later—"

Rachel rose from her knees on the floor, and placed the broken glass she had collected onto the counter top.

Joey noticed a gleam of red, sprayed among the shards of broken glass, and for four fleeting seconds he was honestly concerned enough to let a few words escape.

"Your hand Rach."

His voice was soft and familiar and Rachel's heart warmed with promise until she saw his tired face return to stone; determinedly set to hate her.

Rachel looked down into the pool of crimson filling her hand, angry, sad and fascinated, and slowly walked towards the sink to clean it with alcohol.

By the time she had managed a bandage of napkins, Joey had moved behind her towards the door, and now stood resolutely by its opening.

The harsh apartment hallway light was setting a yellow fire to his strong masculine features.

Standing in the stream of light, with her wounded hand, next to Joey, suddenly made Rachel feel so helplessly small. He didn't need to say what he wanted her to do.

And he didn't need to say it would probably be for the last time when she left.

She assembled all the bravery in her soul to utter off the next necessary eight words.

"Can I have five minutes with you Joey?"

Joey stared grimly out into the hallway, at the familiar door that neighbored his; he glanced back into the room, towards the drops of blood still streaming down Rachel's hand; he looked at the shattered glass, dangerous and irreparable, and against all instincts, he gave her a solemn nod 'yes'.

* * *

Monica was leading the way off of the balcony when suddenly her raven hair flashed in the distant city lights as she turned around to face Phoebe, as much as her height would allow.

"Oh my god—"Monica said in a high voice more revealing than she intended.

"Jesus!" Exclaimed Phoebe as she stopped abruptly, trying not to run into Monica's smaller more fragile frame.

As Phoebe struggled to read Monica's face in the faint light her heart stopped as she registered tears were threatening to invade her deep blue eyes.

"Mon, sweetie, what's wrong" As Phoebe placed her hand on Monica's arm, Monica ripped it away from her. A hurt and alarmed expression dawned on Phoebe's darkly lit face.

Monica looked desperately into the sky and then leveled Phoebe with a stare.

"You knew--" she stated more inquisitive than accusatory.

"Mon I…" Phoebe paused at her words. She didn't expect this from Monica now. Not now.

Monica flailed her thin arms wildly into the air and shouted in the most primal voice. "NO!YOU KNEW!"

* * *

SoHo

"So shouldn't you be heading home" inquired Charlie playfully with a smile on her face as she sat back on her warm leather sofa, with hot chocolate in a dark blue mug, slowly spilling onto her fingers.

The soft liquid brown was almost interchangeable with her beautiful skin.

"And leave someone here alone barely equipped to drink hot coco without a designated adult. I bet you're regretting your decision to go sans the napkins now" Ross quipped, gently changing the subject.

His hair was ruffled and soft from lying against the pillows.

Charlie rose in eyebrow playfully "its fine…sometimes feeling something a little hot between your fingers is worthwhile"

A sly grin slid into existence on her sharp face.

Ross, who sat on the other side of her sofa, turned to face her. He spread his legs over the cushions next to hers and gave her the sexiest grin he could muster.

"So how hot is too—"he began.

"You know, stop" Charlie said in deep breaths of air while laughing almost hysterically.

"Yeah I always sucked at that part"

"Something's are constant" Charlie playfully stated back as they laughed lightly at each others hopelessness.

"We're almost sad." Ross gently shoved her shoulder.

"Yeah…almost." Charlie replied in a deeper, affectionate tone.

When their smiles faded, Ross sat down his mug on her coffee table, and motioned for Charlie to come over to him with his hands.

She laughed and flashed a bright smile. "No sir, this partnership is 50-50."

Ross smiled and met her half way. They paused for a few seconds until Charlie looked unsure of herself.

He then wrapped her deep within his strong arms, as her hands rested on his shoulders. She allowed herself to lie in his strong frame

Gently whispering almost inaudibly into her ears, he asked, "How did I get such good friend."

Charlie was clearly beyond touched, but she desperately wanted to keep the mood light.

She slowly pulled away from Ross and kissed him on his cheek. As she stood up, she ruffled his hair and smile.

"The feeling's mutual stupid"

"Hey I was having an honest moment!"

"It was 5 seconds away from being an adult's Dawson's Creek"

"Dawson's Creek? Charlie seriously?"

"I borrowed the season DVD from YOU!"

"That was Rachel's" Ross exclaimed in a shrill voice.

Charlie raised her eyebrow comically. "Oh really?"

"Yes…mostly…shut up" He smiled as he hit her with a leather pillow. Charlie staggered with laughter into the kitchen for a cup of water.


	13. NY: part II

Rachel lit a cigarette, left over from one of Joey's dates on the coffee table, smoke whipped thickly into the air before she spoke. She didn't even know she had started again until now.

As she noticed how intensely angry Joey remained, she thought dryly that cigarettes don't kill you fast enough.

She waited until Joey finally managed some form of eye contact; when he darted his eyes past her to the clock, she took that as initiative.

"So much to say…huh" began Rachel awkwardly, unsure of Joey's patience…she continued a little stronger:

"So how did we get here? I guess I'll start with me and Ross. Ross and I…. when I was little there was this girl I knew the real insecure but really sweet type…who uh, one day asked me 'what it was like to be beautiful?" Rachel sighed; "Because I'm so gorgeous right?" she laughed harshly and pulled from her cigarette.

Joey remained stoically silent. She didn't die from instant spontaneous lung cancer so she continued.

"And I uh…I said I don't know I guess I don't think about it. Cause we were like twelve at the time and I just knew I got almost everything I wanted…"

Joey shifted his feet in slowly on the carpet, seemingly disinterested.

"And she, well then she just gives me this dead pan look of realization like 'don't you see it or something' and I'm getting aggravated so I say 'what!' and she, she says 'so that's what its like…not HAVING to think about yourself'.

Rachel gave a slight smile into Joey's empty face.

Joey muttered, "So—"

"So like finally over two decades later I've begun to see so much more meaning that conversation."

Joey now stared ahead blankly at the flashing television.

The world passed by in his glazed eyes as headline news flashed in his pupils. North Korea was in continued nuclear dissent with the UN. Odd solar flare activity near Mars. Brad Pitt is a father for the sixth time, this time with a dash of Japanese charity. France has unacceptable weapons of mass destruction in Ethiopia. Oprah's lost weight again.

Rachel's voice went on emotion rising, struggling to find her words.

"I don't know a lot of things Joey. But I know being with Ross used to be such an effortless thing, it wasn't having to think about all the insecurities of a relationship, it was not having to calculate it, it's just such apart of who you are it's not a conscious effort—

"So…" Joey mumbled again his eyes glaring at her not seeing where she was going.

"—so when you do you suddenly become so much more conscious of things. Maybe it says something's wrong. Everything is forced. I love Ross…but I've just become so conscious of thing which is weird because it always used to be him who over analyzed everything"

Her words choked in her throat as tears swelled in her eyes. She wouldn't cry, not when Joey was this angry.

"I just became aware of how fast MY life was becoming OUR life and that should be okay because that's what marriages are…but so much of this is just passing us by…and finally (she began to get louder) you fucking wake up with a kid and possible car note later and say WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?"

Joey didn't even flinch at her outburst; something about the television light was safer for him to focus on then Rachel right now.

Rachel stood up pacing back and forth across the carpet. She left her cigarette on the small coffee table in front of her.

"I guess, I just don't understand why everything is conscious routine effort now. I'm so aware of all our…of all of my insecurities. Ross deserves this dream finish. And I…am…I am just so scared that I'm going to get lost somewhere in between Monday mornings and PTA meetings. That I'll be just as desensitized as Mon."

At those last words, tears flowed freely down her makeup.

She squinted and hesitated as if an invisible wall had fallen in front of her path.

Tousling her hair, she continued "It's like we wake up every morning, make breakfast, drink coffee, go to work, come home, take a shit, and with the same efficiency of a work memo, we mutter off 'the I love you's', go to sleep and repeat the same thing every minute of every day for the rest of our lives."

Rachel collapsed onto the leather seat behind her, her hair falling all over her shoulders. She leaned forward and put out the cigarette and stared into space. She'd been waiting months to articulate the mysterious discontentment building up inside her.

"And Ross is okay with this…He doesn't ask that I'm perfect. I just wish I wasn't so conscious of how secondary our love has become…to life, to kids, to work, and so on and so on…maybe I could be just as happy as Ross then…and Chandler understood, because of him and Monica and everything with that, so of course we leaned on one another a little more than you guys. We both had these Gellar's who were preoccupied with themselves, their dreams or the failure of their dreams. Chandler's was of course much worse. When he came over the other night, he was just looking for a friend…and I expected to be a friend, nothing more"

She looked towards Joey desperately for a response of any kind, verbal or non verbal. She felt anger returning to her as the expression on her face hardened. How could he of all people become so cold to her over a lie?

Chandler and Joey were always close, but she still expected Joey to care about her side of things. His reaction was beyond painful.

"Joey---"she said with exasperation.

Joey suddenly looked up at her in anger and confusion.

"Rachel…" he almost whispered.

"Joey please say something, yell, or kick me, anything!"

"I'm sorry Rach…you're looking for something from me? Oh my God. You don't even see why you can't have this conversation with me, do you? What do you want? Sympathy? I am sorry for that Rachel because I don't even know what to say to you. For this last minute I've just watched your mouth move and tried to hear these words but there's really nothing you can say to me at this point."

Rachel tiredly begged "Then you tell me Joey, why are you so angry with me, what the hell is it you're so damn convinced I did? What is it exactly? And don't tell me I provoked Chandler cause you and I both know that's not true"

"Rachel—"Joey warned with his deep tone.

"--NO, What Joey?" Rachel snapped clinching her teeth.

"How stupid do you think I am Rachel?" Joey yelled standing up quickly, his masculine frame blocking out the television, yet allowing the light to glance off his back, giving him a surreal appearance.

Rachel knew he just hit a breaking point; what came out of his mouth now was probably going to be some combination of truth and hate and she sat back down in preparation for both.

He continued in a strained voice:

"I know that's the running joke with you guys and most of the time I really could care less because it doesn't take brilliance to see what's been going on! There is nothing you can say about Ross to defend your actions…"

"There WERE NO ACTIONS with Chandler that night! He was drunk. I didn't provoke him and I'm not saying anything against Ross!"

"SHUT UP, for two minutes please cause there's nothing you can say about Chandler to make me think you didn't in some way welcome that night….And so there's nothing you can say to show me you really give a damn about Monica, Ross, Chandler, or any of your friends Rachel, cause from day one all you think about is you!"

"You're an asshole, I'm not saying I'm a saint, but you can't tell me I don't care! What have I done…that's so horrible you can't even make eye contact with me…why do you hate me?" Rachel replied, her voice trembling with anger.

Joey yelled back "That's just it! I don't hate you! I loved you! Don't you realize that! No one is asking for you to be perfect, for you Rach, no one ever does…just as a friend, not to fuck Chandler!"

The words out of Joey's mouth knocked all the breath and reason out of Rachel. She was reeling back into the cushion behind her. She felt each word tearing through her flesh with the equivalent of a bullet spay, leaving her speechless and bleeding to death in his apartment.


	14. NY: part III

Ross flipped through Charlie's mp3 player until he settled on Luther Vandross.

Sound amplified and spread throughout the loft.

"**_If this world were mine_**…"

Luther's soul poured into the flat as Ross stood up and gazed across the New York skyline with Charlie's stunning floor to ceiling view.

His soft brown eyes piercing the city.

He glanced across the room, and all the space in between them, and all of a sudden her brown eyes were piercing his.

Ross breathed in sadly, "I just love her so much"

Charlie, "Ross…she loves you too"

"BUT" His voiced cracked "you don't understand…I would give up everything for her, I'd be anything for her, and she just, just doesn't care, she's been so distant lately… and she can just lie to me about what she does or where she is…We should of….this time things should have been different…"

He added in almost a whisper "We should have been done being stupid".

A much closer Charlie touched his hand softly.

"If she felt half…of what you feel for her...it's probably nothing. She comforted him gently while the thoughts from her conversation with Chandler and Phoebe tapped along the edges of this moment.

"Ross, have you ever just…needed someone else?"

"Wha---"

"Sometimes people just need one another so badly, that we collide in the oddest ways"

Placing a finger to his lips as he started to talk, she whispered in his ear:

"Shh…all the rest is just empty conversation…dance with me"

The sky outside was dark, but the lights inside the flat were warm and vibrant.

It was the kind of environment that catered specifically to the soul.

So Luther carried on, accompanied by Charlie's voice at times, and washed all of New York away, until they were so much farther away than anything resembling their lives, everything else was irrelevant.

_**If this world were mine**_

_**I would place at your feet**_

_**All that I own**_

_**You've been so good to me**_

****She was right. All of the tears he could cry and words he could say in this moment were just as she danced in his arms swaying left and right, to the rhythmic soul of R&B and Luther, for the first time in his life he finally understood the simplistic necessity of touch, the innocence of just needing touch… it's the oddest collision.

"Thank you so much" he whispered back "Thank you"


	15. NY: part IV

Rachel and Joey

'Shit, so this is what it feels like when time stops', Joey thought as he took a deep breath in while thoughts swirled through his mind. They were all blurry and ambiguous. 'I've never been this far out of line with Rachel before…I should have let it go, oh my god, she's never going to forget this'

Joey still steaming with frustration lowered his head in guilt.

Rachel stood with her mouth open for nearly 45 seconds before she stood up abruptly, grabbed her bag, and walked towards the door without saying a word.

It was Joey's voice that stopped her from leaving.

"Rach, I'm sorry, that was… Rachel what I'm saying…It's just that I'm the only one who is still single, I go out more times than any of you guys, on dates all over the city….did you really think at one point I wouldn't see you somewhere?"

Rachel turned around slowly and just stared back at Joey, her mouth open and a blank expression occupying her face.

In a voice barely above a whisper she responded, "Oh, okay Joey... So being out in public together constitutes as fucking"

"It wasn't just that you guys were together. It was the _way _you were together. It was the way he looked at you and the way you touched him, a thousand other ways that shouldn't happen between married friends."

Rachel sighed then looked away towards the kitchen.

"In all the years, we've known each other…this moment is the worst we've ever had," Rachel whispered in shock.

"Bullshit Rach. Take responsibility. I don't care what's wrong between you and Ross. Chandler is my best friend and he loves Monica more than anything, you should love Monica too. I don't see how you could tear them apart Rach. Out of every man in New York City you can have an affair with…you chose one that would destroy everything. Ross, he would do anything for you if you just talked to him."

"Okay. Thanks Joe. Don't you tell me how much Chandler loves Monica after I walk in on this. You don't get that right!"

Joey's face flashed crimson as he stopped pacing in front of the window.

Rachel continued exasperated, "Now could you tell me what the hell does any of this have to do with you? Why do YOU hate me...Oh my God." Rachel's face dawned a look of realization and horror as she cupped her mouth with her hand. Her ocean eyes wide with fear and sadness.

"What?" Joey responded in frustration, his hands thrown into the air.

"This isn't about Monica, Ross, Chandler, or anyone else…Oh my God…I'm so stupid. This is about us isn't it Joey. This is about why I didn't come to you instead of Chandler….isn't it? This is why we can't have this conversation…"

"I would never do that to Ross" Joey said firmly his eyes shifting to the rug.

"Do what Joey! I'm not talking about sex. All Chandler and I ever did was dance. And you're right maybe I should've had told Ross or Monica, or the whole damn world. But we had this escape, this sanctuary to cling to, and we knew what we both felt so well. It kept Chandler alive. It kept my marriage healthy. It kept our sanity. Joey you know…I know you know….sex was never even a possibility. We're just friends…best friends…who needed something from one another. But it was never an affair. Not mentally, not physically. And even if it was, in the remotest possibility, you're mad because of something else. Something I should have realized much sooner and I'm so sorry for that."

Rachel began to shift towards him slowly.

Joey stared into her eyes, while his brown ones became watery and unfocused.

Rachel stepped closer until she was less than a foot away. She murmured quietly into the air between the two:

"Joey, how long has it been?" Her voice came out much weaker than anticipated.

She didn't need to explain. They both knew what she was asking.

Holding her gaze he answered just as quietly, "for years, since the first time I told you, since one minute ago".

"Oh Joey" Rachel said, tears flowing down her face.

Joey's body was now trembling as tears choked his voice. "I never meant to be so angry. I didn't even know how much I still did until all of this. It's stupid and elementary and I know. I just…If you came running to anyone—"

"—you wanted it to be you." Rachel finished for him.

"Yeah…I, I really did believe you and Chandler were…together…I was so jealous, I just assumed. I'm sorry for being this way…but I will never be sorry for –"

Rachel's voice exploded against Joey's.

"No! You don't get to be that guy. That guy who did it all for love. That guy who couldn't help himself. You don't almost sleep with Monica and still get to be that guy. I was so stupid before. I didn't see through your anger and your thing with Monica. I thought you had moved on. You took advantage her because you wanted to get back at Chandler for taking something from you. That's why my best friend's underwear was on the floor an hour ago…vengeance. And then you try to accuse me of all these things, of being all these things…and it didn't have a damn thing to do with hurting Monica, Chandler, and Ross."

Joey's eyes pleaded with hers.

"But Rach I love—"

"—those words mean nothing to me. Not from you. We all fuck up Joe. But for you to attack me. Judge me. When you're naked with Monica! Judge me. Use the pretense of nobility to judge me!"

"I've never lied about how I feel about you. Not EVER. I never said I stopped think about you. I know you care about me too, sometimes; between us I think its still there."

Rachel stopped him with a motion of her hand, "It's not."

Their eyes burned into each other until Joey continued, "It just hurt that if you were unhappy, you'd come to me. I know it's selfish. You don't think I know that? That I tried to move on! I did, I tried. With millions of girls and millions of ways, with millions of failures. I knew about you and Chandler for weeks and I never said anything. So if you don't think I tried, if you think I'm just this horrible person who wants to hurt my best friends, you really don't know me. Maybe subconsciously I thought Chandler deserved it, but I would never have done that intentionally with Monica, used her."

Rachel heard his sincerity, and it was academy award winning moving. But she was just too infuriated with him to care.

Joey mumbled, "I just wanted you to want me, I wanted what I thought was between you in Chandler. If you stopped loving Ross, I wanted you to love me before any other man."

Rachel turned her head towards the window, looking out at the buildings across the street .Then suddenly she closed the open space between them, while they stood in Joey's apartment.

Joey could feel her soft breaths puffing out of her body. She smelt like something with vanilla and smoke.

Pressing herself against Joey's frame she asked him tensely; "so is this what you wanted?"

"Rachel, please"

"No, Joey, if this is worth you calling me a hoar, accusing me of adultery, hating chandler, and sleeping with Monica, then take it!"

Rachel was a harsh mixture between anger and hysteria.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, salty tears invading every available square inch of her face, "Take it! Take it! Joey! You wanted what you thought Chandler had right?"

Sobs racked her small frame.

"Take it! I promise this is the same body that nearly fucked Chandler!"

Joey stood there staring above her, slow tears trailing down his face. His shoulders were heaving up and down. He couldn't look at her, he couldn't look at himself. He could barely stand to look at all the inanimate objects throughout the apartment that reminded him of them.

"Come on! Be the man you were thirty minutes ago!"

Rachel began to lift her cotton shirt off of her chest.

Joey let out a cry. "No Rach, please, I'm sorry"

He reached out and pulled her shirt back down.

Rachel twisted away from quickly, "no if I'm a selfish slut let me be one." Joey instinctively tried to hold her still.

Crack.

The palm of a hand meeting the cheek of a man sounded and Rachel looked upwards gasping.

Blood was smeared across his face where her hand struck. Joey was stunned and still.

For a second she thought she had killed him right there on the spot until she saw the blood was coming from her cut.

Joey looked at her with the most defeated expression he'd ever worn in his life.

"I…Rach…I'm so sorry I've hurt you this much. I was stupid…"

"No, Joe" she responded with a dangerous sarcasm lacing her tone, "you weren't stupid…you were just in love, right? And now I'm confused, because what was worth hurting so many people for earlier, you no longer seem to want!"

"Stop doing this Rach you have made your point!" He yelled, anger drying his face.

Then before he could react, her lips were crashing violently into his, tearing his skin, leaving him numb with pain.

It lasted only for a second and as she stepped back Joey saw tears were still flowing down her skin. He tasted her salt and her pain.

She said slowly, choking on her words, her anger calming.

"Well there you go. There's your affair. Sorry it wasn't as nicely packaged as it was for Chandler…"

She collected all her things and began to walk towards the door before turning around for the last time.

Glancing around the apartment that had been so familiar to her and Emma, she finally rested her gaze on Joey. Then the oddest realization occurred to her and she knew she should tell him exactly what it was.

"all those accusations against me Joey, without a chance to defend myself…all because of love…I remember, when we were in Barbados, I remember thinking that I would never be in love with you, because Joey I don't think you've ever understood really what love is. Not then. Not now. It's not sex. It's not convenience. It's not acting with pretense. It's not conscious. It's not… "

She paused and glanced at Joey, "it's not worth the explanation. There were feelings Joey, just feelings" She looked down at the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. "Probably not much more than what you felt for her last night. What was her name Joey?"

Joey's expression grimaced. He knew he didn't know…he hadn't known in so long. But none of that mattered anymore, not now, not ever again.

A door slammed. A wall from within the apartment was given a fist shaped hole. Feet scampered down the stairs. And drops of blood on the floor, gave with frightening conviction, the death of a friendship.

It's odd.

How much we need contact and interaction.

The idealism of touch. And yet it's a risk isn't it?

Because we'll all eventually touch something that we'll break who we are.

Tear our skin.

Or bruise our soul.

And the very thing we needed can leave us bleeding to death on the floor.

Touch.


	16. NY: part V

"Shhh!"

A brother's deep soothing tone slid into her awareness. She apparently had started crying louder without even realizing this time.

The bed was shaking with her body's trembles as they lay on the comforter together. His back was against the headboard. She was leaning against the pillow that was leaning on him.

Small and fragile.

"It's too hard…I can't—"a waterfall of sobs.

Ross rested his head against the intricate rose petal design on the back of the head board and raised his eyes in frustration. He hated being helpless; incapable of making her sadness fade.

"Shh, its okay." He slowly stroked her long hair, while he held her tighter than he had ever held her in his life. For the first time in a long while he felt like the big brother again, protecting his little sister from the world.

"It's not okay." She whispered. "Nothing will ever be okay again. I'll never be fined."

"Fine? And Eww, did you just spurt a snot bubble on my face"

A strained response in between snobs. "… he's having an affair!.. I can have snot bubbles!"

"No… I mean if you want the bubbles fine" he handed her a tissue, "but I mean no he's not having an affair Monica, trust me" Ross offered for comfort as he studied her face.

"Yes, He is. I know because of Phoebe!" she exclaimed nearly breathless.

The whir of the ceiling fan circulated the air above them with a steady whiz sound.

The smell of cinnamon drifted from the master bedroom's bath.

"We don't know that and I seriously doubt it's with Pheebs. I think she really thinks he's gay. And she's really happy with Mike. I mean leave the door open while we make like monkeys on the kitchen table so Ross and Ben can be scared for life kind of happy. "

"No, Phoebe told me! She's not having the affair…unless?" a pause in reflection from both individuals in the room.

A unison "nah" followed.

Ross' voice continued.

"No, he's probably not and if he's that stupid I'll kill him"

"Is that figurative?"

"It's only figurative if figurative is the bloody kind"

"Oh. No, no, it's okay. I don't think you'd make it behind bars, because eventually they'd indict you. Then mom would be left all Rossless."

"Hey I'm willing to be a bitch for protection, I'll survive; I grew up with you threatening me all the time didn't I, I've acquired... bitch skills."

Laughter, then a sniffle, "yeah that's true. Hey, go get me some water?"

"Okay Monica, that only worked when we were younger, what's wrong with your own two feet"

There's a shove in the dark. "Ross, water!"

A grumbled, "Ahh, Dammit Monica." As he soothed his arm. He stood up slowly, his figured shadowed by the one small lamp on a nearby bed stand.

Rachel was more than adequate at elegant interior design Monica reflected silently as she looked at the soft blanche carpet and deep cerulean walls and light gold trimming.

Refined oak bookshelves placed leisurely on the left of the bathroom door which was half open.

The his and hers sided closet's soft light lit the carpet like worn early November snow.

The sound of bare feet reenters the room as Monica is still thinking about snow and life and…those people across the street, through the window having an argument…

"What is it Mon?" Ross asked gently closing the distance Monica placed her thoughts.

"I'm staring out of this window…and the most surprising thing is not that I look catatonic…shut up…it's that the sky hasn't fallen, it's that the city's still glowing, it's that I'm breathing…I am just so tired"

She shifted her position on the bed.

"Wow" Ross said calmly.

"What?" she answered.

"Nothing it's just that your ass is a really awkward spot for my hand."

"Sorry"

"Therapy reparations and your fine"

"Deal."

She rested her head on her brother's shoulder as the twilight of 11:00 pm occupied the bedroom.

"Hey Monica…I'm sorry I've been away. I shouldn't have been. I've got four girls who have needed me."

"Four?"

"Yeah…you, Rach, Emma, and Carol."

"Really what happened to Mom…I mean you used to be such a mama's boy. Do you remember that pink dress you used to wear because you wanted to go to mom's social banquets, with the white bows" she teased gently.

"Yes, Yes, I do. Because it also doubled as a decoy to camouflage me in the closet when you were looking for food" he pauses in reflection "damn, that was a good cloak."

"Nice."

"Alright I guess I'll go check on Emma for the last time… and make room with Rachel on the fold out in the living room"

"Oh Rachel's asleep?"

"Yeah, after I got back and she told me everything, she just knocked out. I think she's exhausted"

"Everything huh, so I guess that includes Joey and I?"

"Actually she didn't say much about Joey and you just that you were over his apartment…why?"

"I'm…not sure you would even want to know"

"You'd be surprised what I can handle…but you don't have to say what it is…Monica I just want you to know that I'm starting to understand some things, and for whatever reason you were there…sometimes we just need someone else…in plutonic ways, in physical ways, in mental ways, and of whole lot of other ways…I know you…and I know you're feeling guilty about a lot of things right now…but I just want you to know…in case I don't tell you enough…allow yourself to be human…and I love you. See you tomorrow."

Her broad eyes gazed back at her brother with a smile glowing behind them.

"I love you too big brother, and you've grown so much, and I'm so glad you're my best friend. Goodnight and I'm sorry about having to say here…but thank you for letting me."

He smiled, walked over to his sister and kissed her cheek and then nodded as he walked out of his bedroom.

In all our wars, and in all our dances, and in all the interactions we know, one thing remains universal between friends, siblings, lovers, strangers… "It's the sense of touch. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something." – _Crash, Paul Haggis._

* * *

Joey placed his hand over his eyes after cleaning up the broken glass on the floor and counter, rubbing them tiredly. A knock sounded on the door and instinctually he said dismissively, "go away, please." 

The knob turned and there was Chandler, winded and red, breathing long and deep.

They never were much for locking doors.

Joey's mouth fell open. He didn't know what he felt; he was just absolutely to exhausted to process the man standing in his door. Before he could remind his brain of its speech functions Chandler spoke softly.

"Whatever happened, I don't need to know right now. Can I just say I'm sorry Joe…I know that we've been distanced, I know how much it hurt you about Monica and I, and I know you've been lonely…I just wanted to say I know, and I want to work on being your friend again, if that's okay?"

Joey gave a brief smile.

"Chandler…we…you never stopped being my best friend."

The two men had an awkward pause, fear gripped them and they were destined to stand there for decades, before Joey closed the space in between them with a strong hug. Joey then gripped Chandler's shoulder and leveled him with a stare.

"She's not here anymore man"

"That's fine. I probably needed to apologize to you anyways"

"She's at Ross', you should go" Joey said half disappointed and half hopeful. As much as they were afraid of one another right now, they somehow understood they needed one another just as much.

"You know what? I will but it's been a long night and I'm sure she's tired too. I'll let her sleep and go first thing in the morning. Right now I can practice my take me back speech on you" Chandler joked dryly, placing his coat on the new wooden kitchen table.

"Chandler…there's something you should know." Joey said with a sigh, guilt invading his face from all directions. Chandler who knew his friend too well stopped him before he could continue.

"We've all got enough shit for one night Joe, tomorrow we'll deal, but tonight…I just need a place to stay"

"Yeah see I don't know if you exactly meet the profile of a desired roommate for Joey's apartment"

"Well I still don't know what big Leon told you but I'll put our and grow boobies for a bed and shower"

A soft smile emerged on Joey's face as he patted Chandler on the back in closed the door behind them.

* * *

Mike kissed his wife passionately in their dark bedroom, and he didn't stop until he knew she was okay again. 

She didn't half to say anything when she came home and walked through the door, she didn't have to.

Her tired eyes were enough. Her silence was enough.

Not between them. Words weren't necessary.

He didn't ask questions. He just held her all night and watched her watch the pattern of the window curtains as the moon danced across the sky, modestly covered in billowed clouds.

It was all enough.

* * *

Rachel moaned softly as Ross kissed her neck slowly as he crawled onto the sofa bed beside her. 

"Hey beautiful" he whispered to her in the pitch black air of the living room.

She turned slowly into him and whispered back "hi"

She felt his soft skin on his open chest. Tone and smooth. She struggled to imagine what his expression was there in the dark.

She reached out her small hands and touched his face gently. She felt him smile and she responded like ways.

"I love you…I'm yours okay" she told him slowly.

She felt him nod.

She felt his hands slide under the covers and rest on her stomach.

Ross adored the warmth of her skin underneath the covers. He slid his hand under her silk night tank top until he was resting his hand over her chest.

Rachel felt her body responding and she muttered a soft warning, "Monica, Emma…"

Ross replied delicately, "Shh…I know, I know, I just wanted to feel you. Your heart. I wanted to know you were okay."

A single tear began to roll down her cheek as she sat up and lifted off her shirt. She grabbed the covers and spread them over her and Ross.

Ross pulled her close and Rachel pressed her heart against his. Their skin colliding in the dark. This time he touched her face, unsure of what he'd find.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on his finger tips and felt the slightest hint of a smile.

"With you Ross I'm always okay," she whispered into his neck as they drifted off to sleep cradling one another. Touching their love, their pain, their souls and everything in between.

If one were to ask Ross years later what that moment was like and he wouldn't be able to tell you much more than…it smelt like cinnamon right before he closed his eyes.

And the world went crashing into black. Thus came the end of Wednesday.

The electrical stars we've contrived, the glass towers we've built in New York City, in the world, ultimately are incapable of concealing us from what we fear the most as human beings in our society…touch. The alarm of touch. The delicacy of touch. The crash of touch. It's the oddest dualism….the necessity and fear of touch.


	17. The Thing About Superheroes

**The Thing about Superheroes**

Thursday

Late morning came in a rare wave of fall heat, and set the city ablaze. Orange tones and sharp blues shot out at the human eye from the city streets.

Traffic lights flashing electrical primary shades gave direction to the desperate traffic.

Monica held Emma closely in her arms as she walked out of Ross and Rachel's apartment.

Smiling gently Rachel nodded her head as to reassure Monica. The toddler laughed at her mother's smile and it was the most beautiful sound Monica had ever heard.

She held Emma closer and the child obliged.

Ross emerged from the bathroom and held Rachel from behind as Monica closed the door. He brushed his hand softly against her hair, shimmering from the sunlight in the window pane. No L'Oreal, Ralph Lauren, no Paul Mitchell, and no Louis Vuitton, in all simplicity it was the woman he loved; and she was gorgeous.

It is the kind of warm beauty that made all else, less. That's it; less. She didn't stop his world; he was vaguely reminiscent of the times life continued without her. However he remembered how without her everything else became amplified.

How exhaling became a chore and inhaling excruciating. Days were still days and months would be months, yet with her, this entire world fell out of focus and she emerged with the utmost clarity.

She was above all others, because she was his, and he was hers. Even in the times when they weren't in love, they were always tamed by each other.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it best, Ross recalled. Something to the effect of: Once, all roses, as an entire entity, were somewhat beautiful; and all would gaze upon them like they did the stars in the sky. Beautiful but one of thousands manufactured by God. Until one tamed you. Until one star or one rose became yours. Until you became theirs. And you came to need each other.

Then when you look into a field of grass or stars, you understand. You understand that they're not like yours at all. How very different they all are now, all because you've been tamed. And somehow all the other stars…and all the other roses…and all the other women…are less compared to the one that belongs to you.

Marriage is the art of consensual taming.

"Where are you?" The question from Rachel's lips took a detour and was delayed in its arrival to Ross' ears.

He lowered his head and then kissed her slowly on her left shoulder where her robe left her skin exposed.

"I'm here, baby, I'm always here."

Rachel shivered as his hand swept down her back and onto her thighs. She turned to face his brown eyes.

Damn.

If love could be said a thousand times through a look, he could make good money for that talent.

His roughly shaven cheek brushed hers as he pulled her in for a deep hug. She dove into his comfort, his masculinity, and his scent. Her hands sliding underneath his salmon polo shirt, caressing his back. He rocked her back and forth, swaying on the balls of his feet, supporting her delicate form.

Rachel sighed heavily as she drifted into his existence.

The light from the windows dulled.

The traffic noises lessened. The smell of breakfast became faint. Her thoughts disappeared. Until there was only him, and everything else was just 'less' she thought.

"I don't deserve you. You're wonderful" she whispered into the air in front of her.

"Never forget it" Ross mused as his thoughts wondered again.

For some reason Phoebe continued to emerge in his thoughts. The walk they had yesterday seemed to haunt him. He wanted to move on and forget it but for some reason it pulled on his insides.

Not sure where it would lead, he swallowed into took a leap into the dark, not even sure of why he felt he had to:

"Rachel?"

"Yes baby"

"I just want to ask you one question and it may be hard to answer honestly but I just really need to know the truth. I want us to always be open."

"Okay, Ross you're scaring me"

"I'm sorry it's just…Rach, where do you go Friday nights? Is there someone…someone else?"

Rachel walked over to the sink and began to fidget with the plates and glasses. She was so sure Joey was the only one who knew. He would have never told Ross. 'Why was he asking'? She had been so careful.

He shut his eyes firmly as he felt all his security free falling around him.

Falling faster and faster, waiting on her reply to save him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up in the early hours of the morning; tossing and turning my limbs until they tore me from the cotton sheets and onto the soft floor. I gasped in surprise, choking in the dust and carpet. I looked down at the hands and the legs and the arms extending from my body and they seemed foreign. It was as if I was an invading host attempting to conquer bodily functions. My head ached with anticipation and in the darkness of the room I looked down once more and ordered my limbs to carry me to the living room, quietly, Joey's still asleep, probably.

I stumbled with my hands in front of me while opening the bedroom door. The knob crashes into my abdomen and I realize I'm shirtless.

I was still exhausted, but I couldn't stop.

The darkness of the early morning took pity on the small living room and a faint grayish tone occupied the room.

The window cast a distant feel to the furniture and household items.

I dragged what feels like someone else's feet across the floor into the kitchen.

A pot of coffee was brewing a few minutes later, promising a rush of adrenaline to my thought process.

More minutes pass and I sat under the window, against the wall, armed with my caffeine affixation and Joey's pen and fax paper.

I gazed into my city's hazy still morning and shot glances at the nearby building windows not yet awake.

Their occupants dreaming and distant some awaited a morning that would never meet their eyes.

I breathed deeply into the glass, impairing my vision and forcing me to look above the clouded section of glass.

My head tilted up and I closed my eyes.

The air vent from below rushes up my skin and into my dark hair.

I reopened my eyes and drank in the great sky intertwined between the skyscrapers above.

Clots of dark ink engulfing the red aviation warning lights atop our masses of elevated concrete.

I imagined rising through the glass and into the air, soaring and falling across time until I found her.

Sleeping in someone else's bed tonight.

I wrap myself around her and lift her into the grey morning.

My mind fell from the sky and back into the apartment living room; remembering the pen and paper lingering in these foreign hands.

With nothing more to do, I wrote and I wrote for what felt like hours.

Eventually my eyes focused on the glass in front of me and I hear a deep voice emerge from the shadows behind me.

"I couldn't sleep for that long either"

A slight smile broke on my face as I nodded my head towards my best friend.

He took his place by me underneath the window with a mug of coffee in hand.

We talked until the morning light hit us through the window pane and blinded our eyes.

And this is what I wrote while we were looking into the morning sky:

I know when I see you. Words will fail me, and then you'll walk away.

And then I'll hate myself.

So this is everything I want to say just in case, words fail me. I couldn't sleep last night. So I wrote.

It's important for you to know how much I regret what we've become.

The silences and the screams.

I'm sorry Monica, for everything, for my fear. It's inadequate I know. But I didn't know what you needed or what we needed and I tried to be everything to you.

So my theory is this.

It's overcompensation.

The suburbs and the city.

Property encompassing millions and skyscrapers parting clouds.

Humanity creating fortresses of concrete and steel, brick and gold.

The huge coffee cups at Central Perk.

Countries and wars.

Nuclear weapons and economic sanctions.

All compensating from some basic human need to feel safe if not superior.

And when reality fails us;

When the coffee tastes the same.

When our missiles kill us and our buildings fall beneath our feet, our dreams propel us from the smoke and debris.

Creativity becomes as essential as water, and we'll drink it until it chokes our lungs.

At its best it's art .

At its worse fleeting; a physiological savior incapable of solving starvation, war, and poverty.

This is probably the crux of Superheroes.

It's an overcompensating art form.

Within their urban environments, these heroes defy the fears of humanity. They fly. They swing. They sacrifice.

And yet within the context of reality, they don't translate well.

Fragments of an elusive dream.

These heroes are the overcompensation of our insecurities. Joey asked me just this morning what superhero I thought I was. You weren't there of course but I think you'd enjoy the conversation so I'll transcribe:

"Hum okay…and so what about Ross?" I asked. Joey paused over his cup of coffee and his gaze floated towards the ceiling until I looked up half expectantly too.

"Ross…is definitely a hybrid of Clark Kent and Peter Parker. I'll say he used to be more of a Spiderman. Awkward and sticky. But he ' s evolved into someone who is comfortable just because he is who he is; hence the superman "

"Sticky, Joe?"

"Yeah…the hair."

"Oh. So what about me"

"Ah…I don't know Chandler"

"Yes you do"

"Well I guess you used to be like Spiderman, unsure of himself, but always having humor. But then you de- evolved into…Batman…no Robin. "

'What? I' m a sidekick! "

"Well yeah cause Monica was like batman with all the practicality and utility. You sort of became secondary…and now that you guys have part…you're just Robin…without the direction"

"Thanks Joe"

"Anytime…you do dress better than him though"

"Okay, so this conversation is over"

What occurred to me baby is that we both did it. We both like some superhero team tried to overcompensate for our failures and for our insecurities.

And it started the day we left the city.

Maybe before.

It was our denial.

It was in our silence and in our actions.

It was the house.

It was the Porsche. It was the Navigator.

The garden parties.

So here I am. Stripped and falling without the ability to fly, swing, glide, or use a really cool utility belt.

Passing the skyscrapers and flailing into the sharp grey concrete below.

I'm on my knees and I'm broken and I'm tired.

Above all gifts and words I offer you what is most precious to me.

I offer you my insides.

Each organ and bloody mass. My soul and my mind.

They won't survive long without me. But this is the most I can give.

Wrapped in the package of my flesh.

Bruised and older.

Please take them. For they were always yours. Please take them all…

Now look up.

The small café named Central Perk fell back into Monica's awareness as Emma played at her feet by the huge front window.

She sat there stunned; grasping the letter Chandler wrote her this morning.

Her mind was racing and heartbeat was bruising her chest.

She looked towards Gunther, who remained behind the counter. She was searching for any reason or logic behind his blue eyes, but he was busy preparing the coffee she had ordered for Ross and Rachel.

He handed the letter to her when she and Emma walked through the door and yet gave no indication as to why or how it came to him.

She drew in a heavily labored breath and shifted her position on the cushions.

As an afterthought she remembered the last three words on the letter and she looked up at the café crowd around her.

It was crowed this morning and her eyes gazed slowly among the men and women.

At random she looked out of the window…and there he was; staring at her from across the street. Sitting on the steps of a high-rise.

He gave a smile and her stiff demeanor fell apart. Her body began to tremble slightly and when she began to stand. He motioned his hand for her to wait.

Her mind was numb but she was aware there was a process of seconds and then he was in Central Perk standing in front of her.

He bent down low and embraced Emma in a big hug and set her back down next to Monica.

The toddler was excited and squealed, "Uncle Chandler!"

Monica and Chandler smiled at one another.

Minutes passed and they stood there.

The pools of their eyes drowning each other.

Finally Monica took Chandler's rough hands into her small embrace, she pressed it to her cheek and then to her lips.

Tears emerged from his eyes as he watched her.

She looked up towards his face and he saw her eyes were also occupied by tears.

Her toes stretched as her body reached up until her lips were against his. He tasted her in disbelief while she clung to his blue t-shirt.

Chandler pulled her body against his.

Damn the crowd.

To hell with the stares.

Their kiss was careful and slow until they both decided they needed one another too much to be timid.

Chandler's teeth grazed her soft lips.

Her finger nails pulled against his skin.

Eventually they pulled away from one another and Monica rested her head on his chest.

Emma laughed underneath them and they smiled.

Monica looked back up into his eyes.

"You're right …no more superheroes…no more overcompensation…and I'll accept your gifts, if you'll accept mine too."

"Okay" he smiled back her with tears drying in her eyes.

"Um Phoebe is getting everyone together for a dinner tonight. I didn't know if she had called you yet but—"

"I'd love to"

"Yeah? Okay. Good, because there is probably something Joey and I should tell you before you decide you still want me"

"Mon?"

"Just…wait until tonight; we'll go somewhere where the three of us can talk. Is that okay?"

"Fine I'll wait. It's fine. I gotta go right now"

"Oh me too."

"Bye" As Chandler began to walk off and Monica walked towards the counter to pick up her coffee they both paused but Chandler was the first to turn around, beating her to it.

He opened his mouth to say it, but Monica stopped him with her words, shifting Emma to her other arm.

"I should do this, this time…"

He looked down and laughed. "Okay."

"Chandler I love you"

His blue eyes shimmered and as a crowd walked passed him he replied loudly.

"I love you."

And then he was gone.


	18. Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot

Goffredo Wals' Roman landscape was glowing off the walls of the Metropolitan. It was a rough creative endeavor to ascertain the daily routines of Italian men and woman circa 1630s.

Two tall towers born of russet stone rose, parallel to one another, were at least 100 feet into the roman skyline.

At its entrance, three arched doorways stood over the earth permitting guarded entry.

A single set of stairs scaled its side, giving way to a long terrace.

In the distance, blooming out of the brick perimeters seemed to be full dark trees; which expanded into the paintings edge.

Six figures were clearly visible standing at different depths around the sanded road.

One descending from the stair, one was walking down the open road before him, one peering from a tower window, two in apparent conversation, and one, the closest, in deep contemplation staring towards an unknown destination.

Sighing in amazement, Phoebe studied the landscape painting. Silently wondering which figure represented her.

'Probably the closest one in the center, the man who stood alone in contemplation.

Chandler and Rachel were clearly the two in conversation, shadowed the arched entry near the road.

Monica was the figure furthest away, lost in the open road. And Ross, there he is descending the stairs just fifteen feet away from discovering Rachel and Chandler.

Then there was the figure looming out of the window watching desperately the individuals below.

She knew her Joey anywhere.'

Phoebe's eyes fell once more on her figure in the front of the painting and she smirked at the irony on finding this photo tonight

At that moment Mike came up behind her.

"We have to take my parents back in thirty minutes"

She nodded her head quickly and he smiled and walked away.

The dinner she had arranged would be in two hours.

Though enclosed in the art museum she could feel evening emerging fast from the east.

The picture came into her focus for the last time.

She saw herself painted by the German Wals because she too was in conflict with herself.

Throughout the week an older voice had been rising up within her soul. It lingered in her subconscious and in her dreams.

She asked for its name and it replied, entrancing her soul.

"I am that which must be done"

In her dreams, Phoebe first came to see the embodiment of this voice.She lifted up her head and realized she was in the graveyard.

The one that they had all come to know so well.

The ground was shifting like sand at her feet.

Nothing but the graves was permanent, as rocks and grass and trees sunk and rose against the red sky.

Far in the distance were billowing trees and clouds, grasping at each other; set on fire by the light.

On another hill, far away, was a cross. There was a man screaming in agony on its beams, a crown of thorns scraping his skin.

The blood fell down the hill and onto her feet; sinking and rising.

Phoebe felt a hand touch her shoulder, and she turned to see the blood stained face and hands of Julius Caesar.

He pointed towards a path that had emerged between the two small graves.

She walked cautiously on the continually moving road, paved of gold and silver stones. To her right a man hanged from a lone tree on an open field. He smiled at her solemnly.

And then the voice came again, "I am that which must be done, I am the greatest Angel of all because I made the greatest sacrifice"

Phoebe replied slowly, "I don't know much about but Christian theology but I know you're lying, you're a demon"

An older man walked from the other side of the path towards her. Phoebe recalled he resembled Benicio Del Toro yet somehow less human.

He towered over her and replied as if he had an infinite amount of patience.

"We were all angels…once. No one ever asks those who fell... why they fell. But I will tell you the greatest secret of all. There is no free will among the divine. If I am a demon it because I was designated one for His will. We all serve a purpose."

"I don't understand"

"Do you know that man there" His head motioned towards the cross.

Phoebe nodded her head slowly.

"He's the Christian savior Jesus"

"Yes" he relied slowly as if he savored every letter. "And him, over there"

His head tilted towards the man on the tree.

"He's Judas, the man who betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver"

The sky flared crimson.

"Yes. Do you know who made the greatest personal sacrifice between the two?"

"Jesus redeemed humanity"

Suddenly the fallen angel became infuriated and he screamed a howl into the open air.

"Because he had too! Because he was always divine. He is the Son of God and cursed his father's will in his last breaths. I was there to hear it as the blood spurted from his mouth. Have you ever considered that the divine envy you. Because of free will. Because the greatest sacrifice is made of your own influence."

Phoebe trembled, "What does any of this have to do with me?"

"It's Judas who loved Jesus more than all others! He knew what had to be done. It was more than silver. It was salvation. He sacrificed his name and his soul for the redemption of humanity and all who walk the earth curse him for it. What other disciple would have given up their place among the angels for their love of God. None. He sacrificed himself long before the tree ended his life. Two men died on the fruit of wood during that time to save humanity. For one the wood was smooth and sanded with anticipation, for the other it was less royal, full of branches and crows"

He moved in closer and lifted up her blonde hair, playing with it between his fingers.

"Are you the Devil?" she asked slowly.

"No. I'm your own personal guilt. Your own demon and I am the justification in your mind for what must be done."

"I have to sacrifice myself…" she said without much of a question in her tone.

"No. you don't HAVE too. But you will. Because you love your friends, and their lies will kill them unless you show them the truth."

"I can't betray them."

"You can't watch them betray each other"

The world went black around her but she could still feel it breathing beside her.

"What is your name?" she asked into the darkness.

"Judas Iscariot" It answered. "The mortal damned for helping redeem humanity"

The Metropolitan Museum of Art crept back into her awareness as Phoebe pushed her dreams further away. Mike and her in-laws stood in the hallway looking at her expectantly.

She began to walk towards them, with her heels clicking loudly against the floor.

'That's it then' she decided as she walked into the arms of her smiling husband. 'Tonight I'll betray each of them with the truth. Ross will be broken. Monica will scream. Rachel and Chandler will cower. But it's the only hope we have of redeeming our relationships…and they'll hate me for it.'


	19. Purgatorio

**Purgatorio **

There is four feet of separation between my feet and hers, even less between our hands, causally draped over the elevator's richly decorated walls.

Was she waiting for me in the lobby? Was I waiting for her?

Not exactly, it was probably a delayed unconscious action on both parties involved.

Ross and Rachel always run late. She was always on time. I knew she would be on time.

Did it fucking matter?

We're here.

Park Avenue.

Phoebe's mother and father in-law had been more than generous to the new husband and wife when grandchildren became a strong possibility.

It's beautiful property.

But the woman in front of me has stolen all my awareness.

There's four feet between us but ask me where she touches me…

Ask me.

If you dared to know the answer would not crawl from my thin lips and into the air, a worthless jumble of phrasing and pretense, I would rather show you.

Lining my fingers against the rim of a three-inch white medical scalpel, I would place it in her hands.

Naked before her, I would fall into her grace.

Pieces of skin open and neatly lined trickles of red fall down my pale canvas.

I would close my eyes because I know it will only be a matter of seconds.

Reaching out my hands to her I pull her face into mine, scraping my teeth against her rounded lips, because she lets me.

I breathe my last breath into her mouth and she smiles because she's found it.

Gripped between her fingers and on the palm of her small right hand is my heart.

I smile without smiling and so does she.

And then she feels it.

Fear and puzzlement invade her delicate features as her face flushes crimson.

A single tear crashes from her blue eyes onto my blank face.

I would watch her carefully as she tilts her head toward her chest and then to my hands, lying peacefully on the floor.

In my hands lies her heart.

She never expected for me to tear from her, what she tore from me. Not ever.

She was the one in control.

But did it fucking matter?

I did it. And now we possess something of each other so delicate and so essential that we'll never survive without each other.

No more than a few fleeting seconds of cold and vacuity.

So that's where she touches me. Every time she smiles and cries and all those blurred days in between.

That's what our love is.

Ask me what she is?

She's heaven.

And she's hell.

And all that lies between.

It's ambiguous and it's fundamental; and all that lies in between.

Words escape her mouth and the whole world falls silent.

It's useless, the existence of anything else.

From ancient Chinese architecture to the Himalayas.

From the Louvre to Heaven itself.

She brings them all to their less accomplished knees.

And here she stands, in this Park Avenue elevator.

Four feet of separation.

Flying skywards into the future and the revelations it will bring.

Chandler stood propped up against the back wall of their elevator studying Monica beside him.

It's in vain, studying her, because he'll never know where her brilliance lies.

Is it between her thighs?

Or behind her eyes.

Is it every cell of her skin?

Is it her heart, a mass of blood and arteries with in?

Maybe it's all these things combined.

Or maybe it's something in between.

It's as permanent as this elevator's location.

Neither here nor there. Not the first floor or the last.

Just rising up in the in between.

Constructed yellow lights pour down on their frames, casting deep shadows below on the elegant marble floor.

The gold trim circled around them on the walls, guarding them and trapping them.

It was almost divine.

Except for the blood scarlet paint drenched into the three whole walls; so rich it seemed as if it could leave a stain.

On cotton. On souls.

It was the compartmentalization of Heaven and Hell, and thus a hybrid, courtesy of Taylor elevators Inc.

Chandler and Monica both simultaneously realize how fleeting their attempt at separation was as the distance closed rapidly. Monica pressed a silver trimmed elevator button on the third floor and the disparity between heaven and hell suddenly became concrete.

This wasn't real, what they were about to do, and they knew it.

It felt as if it was some alternate plane of reality where the only conclusion would be confusion and disorientation.

They knew this wasn't a definite means to an end; but whoever said love and lust were nonexistent in their self-induced Purgatory on the third floor.

Their bodies were crashing into each other as the elevator doors glided open in their usual routine.

Monica's small vintage black dress, clung to her skin, and allowed her legs to wrap around his waist.

He lost his balance in their passion and her back fell into the elevator's side wall. She whimpered almost inaudibly as adrenaline rushed through her veins, but she clinched her legs around him even tighter.

Chandler pulled and tugged at her lips, taking all her thoughts and make up.

Her long dark hair fell out of its neat bun and streamed down her shoulders, rolling and layered.

Her Burberry scent was distracting, because he didn't care for any chemical interpretation of her scent.

He wanted her.

Finding the doorway eventually, he carried her into the hallway and erupted into a fire escape stairwell.

The hollowed sound of stone flooring replaced the padded thumps of his dress shoes.

Monica ripped his cream tie from its neat knot and let it slide down his light blue faintly stripped dress shirt, passed his black paints onto the cold floor below.

"Didn't match huh?" he quipped.

Monica smiled at how well he knew her even in passion.

She nodded her head a quick 'no', and grinned at his hopeless expression.

Their four second conversational interaction was too long for their bodies to wait and soon they were grasping at each others clothing once more.

A shirt and pants were the first to fly into the air and fall into the voided stairway below.

Her dress tumbled into a nice mass below her feet.

They weren't sure where the underwear went.

Minutes passed with them kissing each other in every square inch of their skin. Becoming reacquainted after so many months.

Monica backed into the warm white wall with an exit sign towering over her.

Exposed and yet still an enigma.

Chandler searched for her soul behind her blue eyes gazing at him; there was something blurred and indistinct lying in her pupils.

He had never seen that emotion before in her.

Sensing his hesitation, Monica pulled his frame into hers against the wall.

He gasped and she smiled without smiling.

Amusement flickering behind her deep eyes.

And then it was her turn to gasp as Chandler pressed into her unexpectedly.

Her eyes flashed surprise and glanced down into his. Her mouth opened and air escaped out into the open stairway.

She tensed and squeezed his shoulder until it bruised.

She never expected him to surprise her, the way she challenged him.

The small of her back was bruised from the wall but she still wanted more, her body rising and falling from the strength of his arms.

The walls exit sign suddenly began to flicker a sporadic show of green neon and white until it burned out with a gentle pop.

The consciousness of Chandler and Monica burst back into reality when they heard the sound.

Chandler's smudged leather watch indicated 18 minutes had passed.

He sighed deeply into her neck. Monica remained wrapped around him loosely, her head resting in his strong shoulders.

As their bodies slowed, with the subtle exodus of the electric light, somehow Monica instantly realized what she couldn't see before.

Monica's body slid back onto the floor and Chandler gave her a few inches of room.

He felt his chest and rubbed his hair slowly his mind told him that they were back, all of his organs were intact.

Monica's silence told him the same was true for her.

Their eyes eventually acknowledged one another and tears fell down her cheeks.

Chandler grasped her hands and embraced all the sweat in between.

"I love you" he whispered.

Monica's lips quivered and her chest heaved heavily, "I know. I love you too"

"I know," Chandler replied with his voice cracking at the last word.

"But this is it…isn't it….it's our last time,"Monica asked, her intonation wavering in emotional wind.

Chandler's water rimmed eyes stared blankly into hers as if he had been punched with a cement block.

Then as the thoughts and feelings rushed into his mind he realized she was right. She knew him before he knew himself.

This was a goodbye to their marriage and they both realized that what they were desperately fighting to recapture wasn't a romantic relationship. They were chasing the inevitable goodbye they had known was imminent for over a year. Their love had become something else and they both knew it. They united in their insecurities that day in London and for years after that they were exactly what the other needed, to walk through the life they thought they needed.

It was overcompensation. Suburbs and cars and banquets. But it still wasn't enough.

And it did'nt fullfil them.Or make them stronger. It became the face they were forced to wear even though they knew they were falling apart.

But now they were finely matured by life.

Insecurities and Overcompensations were no longer strong enough to hold together their marriage.

It wasn't anyone's fault.

Not anyone.

Chandler realized it was more complicated than all of this. Yet it was the best explaination. He wasn't chasing after her for their marriage. He was chasing her to say goodbye, and so was she.There was still a deep love there.

The revelation was surprisingly painless for either of them.

"Yes," he said reluctantly and nodded his head.

Monica's expression was calm and understanding. She was ready to move on, she had been for a long time.

She nodded her head slowly and looked over the railing into the dark.

When she brought her face back around the tears were gone.

Her face moved back in front of Chandler's.

Something was still troubling her about them.

"Just…was it some..was it some—"She had to muster all her strength to finish the question and in a very visible sigh she continued, "Somebody else?"

Chandler's eyes flickered and he looked up into the stairs above them. Tears falling onto his neck and chest.

"Don't do this," he said quickly. He sniffled then rubbed his eyes.

Monica's eyes narrowed and more pain crept into her meek tone.

"Was there? I mean, I can accept the fact we grew apart. I just want to know if this decision was influenced."

Though Monica knew it wouldn't possibly change the conclusion of their relationship, she had to know. Sometimes there are things, even among the shattered surroundings of break ups, that need to be spoken.

It didn't matter.

And yet it meant everything.

Because if infidelity was there; somewhere between their sheets and their lies. It changes everything, every memory becomes slightly distorted with the bleak tint of a lie.

Chandler skimmed her expression and answered her insecurely with another question.

"Was there for you?"

Her eyes didn't hesitate as she answered, "yes."

Chandler felt his heart pause and yet it didn't bleed, not like it use to, it was his again.

"Oh" he muttered, hurt and yet not destroyed.

"Yes and no," she clarified. "Joey and I had a moment, after we fought at Rachel's apartment. But nothing happened, I just…I don't want to lie anymore, so I thought you should know. But Joey didn't influence any part of where we are now."

Monica stared oddly at him as he flinched at Rachel's name.

"Thank you." It was all he could think to respond with. He was uncomfortable as hell with idea of Joey and Monica. But the fact that this is what they were both trying to tell him all day took away the sting of betrayal. And in the oddest sense, he understood perfectly well how under those circumstances they would have 'almost'.

"You never answered my question," she reminded him with a contradictory gentle aggression only Monica could master.

Chandler's mind raced through all the reasonable answers he could offer, through the lies and the truth, and that grayish something in between.

He reached into the locked depths of his soul; let his fingers graze the surface of countless things, and when his hand emerged, in it was the small white three-inch scalpel.

It was a daunting task ahead of him, but he would do anything for her.

While maintaining eye contact with Monica's inquisitive stare, he traced the blades edge along the newly scarred skin lines.

Reopening the flap above his heart he removed it once more.

He placed the small accumulation of his life force in the palm of her small hands, staining them forever.

He gave her his heart back so that he could lie to her without blinking, because he loved her, and because he needed her to be happy, desperately.

Chandler confined his heart once again away from its independence, away from thinking of the woman whom he knew was much more than a friend.

If his heart was his own, he couldn't have lied to it. But because it's hers now, he's indebted to her.

"Chandler, was there somebody else?" she asked again, fear lacing her words.

"No, not ever," Chandler said firmly pulling her into his embrace. Telling her what she needed to know to move on with her life. Knowing his first loyalty would always be, until the day he died, to protect her.

For a long while they stood in the crux of Purgatory, feeling each other breathe, nude and unconcerned.

Eventually Chandler fetched their clothes, able to find everything except that cream tie.

She smiled and her teeth beamed. He cried without showing it.

"So where do we go from here? Besides divorce," she asked taking away Chandler's eminent joke about the obvious. Her arm draped across his back.

Chandler knew the question was rhetorical, so he walked towards the door, with nothing more than a heavy exhalation.

Internally he knew the answer with a surprising clarity, at the crux of Purgatory there stood two souls divided, one to ascend to the heavens and one to plunge into hell. She was rising into the new possibilities her life would create now. New heavens and new Chandlers.

He could already feel himself falling and he thought dryly as he tumbled through the increasingly hot air, trying to slow down, "oh god, this parachute's a knapsack."

They opened the door together and emerged into the corridor. Monica walked towards the elevator until she noticed the presence missing by her side. He had stopped by the door and was watching her with the oddest look of pride.

Before she could ask him anything he interjected.

"I AM proud of you. Now go on up, I'll be there, I just need a minute."

She smiled again and was gone with the efficient buzz of elevator mechanics rising up into the sky.

**30 minutes earlier**

From the depths of Phoebe's Park Avenue apartment's stairway a loud metallic clang brutally echoed upwards to the ceiling.

The dim illumination shaded Rachel as she fled into the isolation under the bottom stair.

She took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead, the door swinging shut behind her.

Her elegant red dress collecting pieces of dust from the light stone.

Frustration burrowed itself in her facial lines as she tried to think of what to say to Ross.

She placed her cell phone and purse beside her and fell into her mind.

After Ross had asked her that question in their kitchen and she responded in obvious conflict, she was sure things were going to unravel for them.

But Ross wasn't angry.

When she muttered off something about 'learning how to salsa dance'. He just nodded his head.

It wasn't as if he completely believed her and it wasn't as if he was disappointed either.

The day passed by normally, actually wonderfully. As they played all day with Emma and her aunt Monica, who was also in a better mood. All of them were taking the rest of the week off from work.

When they dropped Emma off at her mom's, Ross told Ms. Green how wonderful her daughter had made his life, and with Ross' sincerity, Rachel knew he meant every word.

As Rachel adjusted his tie for evening in their bedroom he surprised her by kissing her until they were rolling on the bed in infatuation.

There was nothing punishing or jealous about the way he made love to her.

It was gentle and passionate and beautiful.

All he whispered was that 'he wanted to be more for her'.

They would be late but they didn't care.

They were never on time.

Not when meeting friends, not in the way they finally got back together as a couple.

Nothing was efficient about them.

It killed her the way he loved her. She would have to tell Chandler soon, maybe not with everybody around, but soon, that they had to stop and come to a decision about other things.

Ross was back from the autopilot routine of his family ideas and was ready to regain their intimacy.

And every other effortless or unconscious thing that defined them.

She didn't need the escape, he was her release.

Even in their cab ride to Phoebe's dinner, he abruptly stopped the cab and darted into grocery store. He emerged with his charming grin and three roses.

He handed her one but not without first claiming an enrapturing kiss in front of a cab driver named Teddy.

Her eyes watered and Ross kissed her softly again.

"Don't cry," he breathed into her ear. "They should see how beautiful you are."

"Ross--"

"Rachel, do you think anything would make me stop loving you. Tell the truth when your ready."

The world inside of their tiny New York City cab stopped; as the cab continued to drive its way across the wet roads, the traffic swaying and dancing all around them outside their fogged windows.

The radio inside was quietly giving news about new nuclear technology and rising instability in third world countries. The president would even be on the television tonight to address the American public and its growing discontent with Korean and French nuclear defiance.

The streets flashed acid primary colors as the beads of leftover rain distorted the city around them. Dozens of brown and tan faces, hovering under umbrellas, darted across the wide sidewalks as their little cab drove on by.

Rachel felt the guilt lodged in her throat sliding into her chest where it remained.

Did he know?

Oh God.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, sensing her uneasiness.

When the cab arrived at Mike and Phoebe's, they walked quickly into the building, their clothes marked by small rain drops.

Ross signaled for the doorman to press for the fifth floor at the elevator panel.

When it arrived, Rachel offered a weak lie about a phone call from work and disappeared into the stairs quickly while the doorman looked on in elitist disapproval. Ross just nodded his head and entered the elevator, rising slowly into uncertainty.

She remained in that stairway, cowering from the inevitable, when the clamor of doors disturbed the silence of her space.

A voice fell into the depths and reached her ears.

She had come to know that voice very well and immediately her mind associated it with Mike.

There was a slight distortion of sound. But he sounded surprised and that resonated clearly.

"Oh my god! Are you sure? Well it's just a little hard to imagine. Okay. Thanks guys. Yeah Phoebe and I will call you tomorrow. I don't want overwhelm everyone tonight. Okay. Goodnight."

When his phone call ended there was the detonation of more thrown doors. Rachel's mind was rushing with possibilities for what may be happening with Phoebe and Mike. Was Pheebs pregnant?

Before her mind could wrap around grander possibilities she heard the faint but distinct sound of heavy breathing.

There was definitely some one else in the hallway.

Alarm rose in Rachel as she stood in the middle of the floor and looked upwards. Her eyes straining to focus on the space above. She tilted her head and her hair fell onto her open back.

She stood still so her heels wouldn't betray her clandestine presence.

And then she heard it. Another voice falling into her concealed spot far below:

"Didn't match huh"

Chandler.

Rachel's mouth gaped open in curiosity as she stared blankly at the wall in front of her. At that second, a tie landed neatly at her feet.

Chandler.

It was followed by a short procession of pants, and a shirt, and women's underwear.

It was the same expensive Victoria's Secret underwear Rachel had helped Chandler buy for Monica nearly a year ago, in an attempt to romance his wife once more. One that failed horribly.

Now it was lying on Rachel's shoulder.

As quietly as she could she shivered and then removed it.

Rachel's senses were astounded.

'What are they doing?'

'When did they even start talking again?'

'They're too fragile for this?'

Minutes that felt like hours passed by as Rachel heard the heavy breathing and other various forms of contact.

She was stunned and also very afraid to move. If they saw her, things would probably become even more awkward and confusing.

And emerging slowly from the depth of her emotions was anger. She knew somehow that something like this was going to escalate into something neither was prepared to deal with. It was hell down there in the dark.

Rachel wasn't even sure anymore that Chandler loved Monica as much as he thought he did, or as much as he wanted to.

More time passed and finally the breathing slowed.

Words were murmured but Rachel was able to capture most of the content.

Monica told the truth. Chandler lied.

Oh god, he lied for Monica, and he's always going to have to pay her for that debt.

She knew with certainty then, that whatever they were, it was over.

Suddenly the loud stomping of feet came rushing down the stairs.

Chandler.

The clothes.

By the time Chandler had reached the bottom, there was a pile by the first step, scattered and yet…

Rachel pressed herself against the wall underneath the stairs below Chandler, looking up in the space between the railing and the wall.

As he collected the paints and shirt and underwear, he hesitated.

Only slightly, but Rachel caught it.

She quietly slid her shoes closer to her away from the dim lighting and deeper into the shadows.

He rushed back up the stairs to Monica.

Rachel heard the door open and close, and fell into the floor with a deep breath.

The size of the stairwell was ten times smaller than the hole she felt Chandler and her had dug themselves into. She gathered her things and dusted her short dress off.

And as she looked towards the rising stairs, casting various shades of grey across the walls and stone, she wondered how they would ever mediate the disparity between Heaven and Hell.

With all its space in between.

"There she is …" Chandler whispered as I emerged from the stairway door on the third floor.

'Welcome to the space in between' drummed through my head with a steady beat.

His eyes told me he understood what I was thinking. Two of the same souls lost in the uncertainty.

"I guess you saw me huh," I quip, not the slightest bit embarrassed.

"I guess you heard us," he responds in Chandler fashion and now I'm a little embarrassed.

His eyes offer an apology as he shifts his body towards my direction off of the wall.

"That was stupid Chandler...lying...there was a window of forgiveness maybe...but she's never going to forget you made love to her and lied to her..." I say in normal conversational tones.

He nods his head and rubs his chest.

"I love her"

"When she finds out, do you think that's going to be enough to take her hurt away. We were in a rough spot, yes, but then..." I expand my arms, "here comes Chandler...rough spot now becomes vacum of infinite space...Monica's too fragile for this, Ross will be angry but we can work it out. Monica--"

"--I know" he interrupted, "I know...I was just trying to say goodbye without all the shit"

And I know why he did it. Love. Nobility.But it was stupid all the same.

He lied and so did I.

To Ross, to Joey, to Monica, to Phoebe.

I cross the hallway and hug him, this man that's danced behind me for so many years. He's so much to me I can't even explain it. It's not being in love. It's just a very great understanding between to people who just get one another. It's complicated to explain because it doesn't fit neatly in labels or definitions. It's not an affair. It's not just a friendship.

It's me.

And it's him.

With all the history of friendship it's become such an ambiguous relationship.

So I don't try. Not in words.

Ask me…ask me how much I love him.

And if you're patient enough…

I press my cheek against the wounded skin where his heart once was.

I knew she his heart again the moment our eyes meet in this hallway. But maybe...

I don't expect miracles, not in the space in between, not between two guilty souls. The empty void of divine back lots.

I rely on our history.

I press my ear to his chest and breathe deeply.

No, not yet.

I raise my blue eyes to his face and smile at him adorably until he bursts into laughter, honest and sweet.

The first in what seems like years.

I laugh too and lower my ear to his chest again.

No, not yet.

I whisper into his ear.

"Do you remember when my parents got divorced, do your remember how you comforted me"

"Yeah, do you remember when you were going to Paris, how I couldn't say goodbye"

"Yes. Do you remember the best one of all?"

Chandler nodded his head slowly as we said together.

"The day with the cheesecake."

Chandler smiled and showed it and I did too.

"Do you remember the day the twins died?" he asked slowly

"Of course, sweetie"

"You were the only one who didn't blame me, even unconsciously"

His words resonate and I say 'I know' with my eyes.

I try again.

No, not yet.

I back away and create space in between us as I stare into his soul. My eyes ask his, what he needs and they respond generously.

I understand, before he does.

My gaze peruses his lips and I close the distance between us. I kiss him slowly and lightly and then I kiss him on his cheek.

He kisses mine.

I feel his warm tears falling into my face and I know for the first time that this is his soul crying.

I pull him into my embrace, with my ear against his chest. His hand in my hair.

And there it is.

The faintest thing, nearly audibly impossible.

He breathes in intensely and I feel him begin to weep. I hold him tighter and whisper into his ear.

"Chandler, I will always be here, to help you grow it back."

There it is. His heartbeat.

Then the hour reveals itself and we both know we have to go to the dinner. His tears dry slowly, but I know he'll be fine. I know he knows what must be done.

We've got to tell them.

"Tomorrow," he says suddenly on our way towards the elevator.

I nod my head.

"Our worlds will end tomorrow."

We step into the red elevator and the doors close behind us. I press the button for the fifth floor and we begin to rise.

His hand grazes mine and I touch his cheek but I can't shake the inclination that it isn't up to us when we devastate our friends.

We don't lie to ourselves.

Chandler and I will always be somewhere in the space between.

Ask me what we are…

We're friends

We're more.

And all that lies in between.

It's useless to think of what we may have been in different circumstances.

Because the difference, the space, the grayish matter that separates us, is that I've found my heaven, even if I may lose it for a while because of all this, it's there; he's just got to find his.

Even as the elevator carried us slowly into the uncertain sky, we both knew that we were still damned in purgatory. We would always be there when we're together.

Damned by circumstance.

Damned by our guilt.

Damned to always be something in between.

Chandler gives his last weak smile of the night and I return it with similar fragility.

His hand settles on my stomach just as the elevator doors open. And we acknowledge in silence the final reason our purgatory will remain and eventually condemn us to Hell for a while at least.

We were damned by our actions.

Damned by the small existence growing deep within me.

Ask me what it was….

Ask me…

There was that Friday night.

And then there was the haze of Saturday morning.

And all that lies in between.

Chandler knocks on the door lightly and kisses my cheek once more before it opens. We paint on our faces and our smiles, and as Phoebe opens the door and her eyes widen, I see the Judas Iscariot beneath her skin.

She doesn't need to say what she's figured out.

It's in her eyes.

She doesn't need to say what she's going to do.

It's in the way her eyes won't meet mine.

It's all a dance now. A simple process of the inevitable. I hear our friends laughing inside and it's the sound of hell.

As she kisses my right cheek, I can feel purgatory collapsing beneath our feet, definition is emerging, we're falling, and there's no longer so much space in between.

**

* * *

**

**Warning not to read if you either understand all the metaphors or want to keep your own interpretations. **

The thing I love about metaphors, is that in some delicate instances they have a way of conveying truth with more texture and humanity, than simplistic statements.  
I enjoy them because they allow an audience to interpret their own derived notions rather than concrete words alone.  
And above all, they paint phrases for us.  
Why use metaphors as oppossed to tangible reality?  
Why have literature as oppossed to non-fiction accounts?  
They illustrate our lives.

I apologize sincerely if Purgatorio was too complicated a metaphor, or unclear. So I'll do what I don't often do because I want each of you to paint your own conclusions.  
But i'll offer the writers interpretation.

**Individual Purgatories**

As stated in the text, Purgatory symbolizes the intermediate stage between twoopposing entities. Heaven and Hell. Right and Wrong. So forth.  
Every character with in A Dance With New York is in a state of 'in between' by the time this chapter emerges. And their all waiting for definition. To rise above or fall below.

**ross and mike**

Ross' and Mike's purgatories are the only ones that are not self induced. They are in a state of inaction becauase of the internal conflicts of their spouses. Phoebe's judas and Rachel's mistakes.

They don't know what they can do to make everything right again. And there is probably nothing they can do.

**chandler and rachel**

Rachel and Chandler are in one because of their actions of betrayal. They both feel they are damned in some way or another because of their lack of control. But they have different outlooks. Chandler feels he's falling into hell. Rachel feels guilty enough to be condemned but Ross and Emma are her saving grace and why she sees heaven through all the turmoil.  
**They are not in love.** Life's much more complicated than that. They love one another deeply as friends and one night that line became blurred.

Labels are what we like...but they are not always accurate. It's not an affair. It's...complicated. Their relationship lacks definition purposely, because it is a purgatory in itself. Not good nor bad. Just in existence.

**Monica and Chandler**

Monica and Chandler's relationship is escaping the limbo of their suburban marriage. Monica can begin to rebuild her life. Chandler needs to find his.

They were a hard couple to seperate not because of emotional attachments but because of their lack of serious issues in the show. Sure they had arcs revolving around Richard and babies. But there was never a crucial flaw in either of them that would be significant enough to break them up. They had no Ross and Rachel blowups and yet they had no Ross and Rachel passion.They seemed so comfortable. And that's when I realized that in itself was a fault.

So when an significant conflict did arise, the death of their children, they weren't prepared to see the darker sides of themselves. Monica and Chandler have always had insecurities. Chandler covered his with humor and Monica covered hers with the neurotic compuslion to win or serve.

Therefore when an event shook them out of their characterized insecurities, and they had to mature. They matured away from one another. They no longer needed a crutch. They do have a deep love, that should never be understated. But they just don't complementthe others view of the future anymore.

But I'll never say never for them possibily growing back into one another. But right now they need to find themselves.

**Phoebe and Joey**

Phoebe's purgatory is self induced out of loyalty. She knows she will have no resolution until the truth is out. After that everybody will fall into their own invevitable consequences.

Joey's purgatory has been that of his relationships with Chandler, Monica, Rachel, and women in general. The bleak in between status of Monica and Chandler depresses him because they were his dream of a future.

Even though he was once over Rachel, her relationship with Chandler, awoke old feelings of jealousy and anger. As a result he feels he has no conclusive stance with Rachel anymore. He can't be over her. He can't be in love with her. So its something mediated in between. And it is a consant struggle.

With Chandler, they are already beginning to redefine their friendship which always strived the best pre-Monica; or in Chandler's independence.

Purgatorio itself is a metaphor wrapping the chapter together. Because its the one commonality between all of them at this moment. They are all waiting for resolution.

**Ross and Rachel**

Their relationship became a purgatory somewhere in the months after the finale because Ross always had his lists of dreams and according to him they were being fullfilled. Rachel doesn't by nature idealize the future very much because she was very comfortable in the security that they had now and the relationship that they had just reclaimed.

So when life begins flying by at rapid pace. She realizes while Ross is at work, his dreams are materializing all around her, and yet they are losing some of that passion they once had.

Also their relationship has to be on new terms now. Rachel is now equally as independent as Ross, if not more. So the mediation between his and her dreams needs to occur.

The purgatory in their relationship is soley felt by Rachel because she is the one confused and lonely in the midst of life's rapid progression. She does not want to become the life her mother lived. But she does want some of Ross' dreams. She has to find something in between.

In the meanwhile dancing was an escape. It reconnected her with enjoying life in its present moment instead of idealizing the future. It slowed things down and Chandler was looking for the perfect escape as well. That's all I'm going to give for that.

Ross was in heaven basically, until he begins to become aware of Rachel's discontent. He's not discouraged, just determined to bring her back up their with him. But on her terms, not his. That's where they went wrong the first time.

**The Heart and Scapel**

Lastly, the heart and scapel, are very figurative expressions of what Chandler feels like being in love with Monica has become. After the funeral and the drinking and the dancing, their love has become more of an obligation...like surgery. It's nothing anyone really wants to do, but its neccessary.

Because of their history, becasue of their love, they both feel obligated to attempt love again. It's unnatural and its painful. Monica cuts Chandler first because she has always been the decisive one, the one in control, and the one brave enough to try. And that is where 'her brilliance lies'Chandler surprises her by clinching her heart as well. He is the perpetual underdog of relationships but he has his moments.

The funeral with the twins was the first time Monica cut out Chandler's metaphorical heart. She demanded he provide the answers, the security, and the resolution. She ripped out of him his obligation to her, before he could figure out how to give it.

Friday nights and the lilies were Chandler's act of removing her heart without her knowing. She didn't expect to care. But somehow its hurting her more than she even realizes.

These surgery metaphors are the forced exchange of their love against their wills, until Chandler offers his heart in the end of Purgatorio.

The obligation feels like heaven and hell. Because its forced (hell) but he loves her and he probably wouldn't have sacrificed his heart anyway (so its heaven that she still takes it).

And its all Purgatory (indistinct) because he's waiting for resolution.

Yet after making love they realize that the only obligation they have to each other is that they both want mutual happiness.

And the overcompensation which was there all throughout their relationship, wasn't what they were anymore.

They know the need to seperate or at least define themselves as independent once more.

So they said goodbye without the words. They said it in a passion they hadn't felt in years because they are finally both done playing roles. They gave themselves to one another voluntarily. They need time now. Time is good.

Truth would have been the absolute release, but Chandler was afraid of Monica's hurt and anger, so he lied. And in doing so he gave his heart(i.e. forced loyalty and obligation back to her). This time it was his choice to remove it from its independence...for her. It was a cowardly sacrifice/ though perhaps slightly noble.

There's a metaphor in Rachel growing Chandler's heart back as well.

Okay. There are more metaphors guys and illusions but these are all I'm going to explain for now because it's up your own interpretations. Thanks for letting me know and I hope this clarified some things. If not let me know. It's always a pleasure. Thank you guys. Enjoy the rest. ---Float.


	20. The Last Supper

The entire apartment was a stage, as the silk curtains pulled back revealed a wall to wall view of Manhattan dancing in the spirited night.

Lights sparkling like diamonds in dark wine, wind breezing through the buildings and moving the small trees along the side walk, products from of New York City's green space project.

Mike opened the port for their sound system and placed the CD Chandler had handed him; some band called Stray light Run.

Soft acoustic tones drifting into the dining room; curiously sad. Conversational murmurs came to a slow halt as they all gathered around the food Phoebe and Mike had prepared.

"It's beautiful pheebs," Joey said walking past her.

She rubbed his back with her long fingers in small appreciation.

Ross sat down across from Rachel and took in the beautiful view out of the window to his far left. Monica lowered her self slowly into her chair to Ross' left, looking down at the floor and delicate china. When Ross nudged her she didn't respond. He chose to ignore her silence for the moment. Smiling at Phoebe across the dining room table, Mike sat next to Ross on his right.

Chandler's eyes skimmed the surface of the dark oak table and darted up towards Monica's silent face occasionally as he seated himself across from her. At the very end of the table were Joey and Charlie. Both were staring out into the city view to their immediate left.

The band's angst stricken melodies lightened the silence as everyone eventually made an attempt at eye contact. Each one of their eyes, dark shadows of secrets, discretely hiding the ambiguity of worlds.

There was a time, not so long ago, between the aromas of coffee and off tones of missed notes, there was no such thing as discretion between any of them. But the formal dinner had all the grand makings of a farewell ceremony, and it should, because it would be their last as a group.

Rachel was the first to speak.

Slowly and calculated as if each word balanced itself on the world's end.

"I would just like to thank everyone for being able to get together tonight, before we eat, because there hasn't been a lot of that lately, and I think its important, for us….for us to remember what we mean to each other…" leisurely she raised her glass up and all of her friends followed.

A series of cheers rang out through the stylish dinning area, some sincere and some less so.

"I love you guys," Rachel said quietly as she sat back down. Monica's eyes remained fixed on some inconspicuous spot in the middle of the table.

"With that, I say let's consume" Mike said happily as his fork made a precise maneuver for the honey cured ham in the middle of the table.

Movement began to follow, especially as Joey decorated his plate in an array of culinary dishes. He provided pieces of salad to Charlie and her plate, for the bowl she couldn't reach. Charlie laughed at Joey's quickness. Something's are constant.

Ross watched the two of them and smiled.

Something was growing again.

He glanced across the wide table and his eyes fell across Rachel. God, she was stunning. Her eyes seemed focused and intense, her hair was gentle in long waves, and her skin was flawlessly tan and rich. He followed her stare with his soft chocolate eyes, wise and kind, and reached her destination with curiosity. It was Phoebe.

Phoebe's green eyes stared back into Rachel as if they were communicating something of the utmost importance.

Ross' features frowned in curiosity. When Chandler moved in his peripheral vision he shifted his full attention to his best friend. He seemed to be doing significantly better.

Chandler leaned forward and whispered something into Rachel's ear discretely. Ross would have never noticed if he wasn't studying him.

Rachel turned and looked at Chandler, then smiled at him slightly. As she turned her head back towards Phoebe for split second she noticed Ross' steady attention. Her eyes showed a flicker of hesitation before she quickly recovered with a smile and then mouthed 'I love you so much'.

Ross allowed his face to smile, while he felt his heart accelerating inside his chest. Something was wrong.

He glanced down at his hand and realized Monica had placed her small right hand in his left; right between his thumb and index finger.

She hadn't done that since they were kids.

He looked at her questioningly and her eyes wouldn't return the favor; still unbendingly attentive to the table.

Ross sighed and began to cut into his ham when he heard a soft cough. Charlie caught his eye from the end of the table. She was staring at him as if her eyes were desperate but her face was attempting not to show it.

Her lips moved very slowly without sound. 'Excuse yourself to the bathroom, I'll follow'

Before even the confusion could resonate in his mind, a voice from the opposite end of the table broke into the sounds of silverware and eating, clearly intending to gather everyone's attention.

Frustration entered Charlie's expression as she glanced almost pleadingly towards the direction of the voice.

Before everyone could even fully turn their heads, Phoebe was standing.

She grazed her eyes carefully over each one of her friends, as to remember them as this forever, she held Mike's hand tightly than let go. Her long blonde hair shifted in an invisible wind.

'Everyone probably thinks I'm announcing pregnant' Phoebe thought cynically.

But in many ways she was pregnant, pregnant with words that would mean the end of relationships.

Dangerous words with sharp truths.

The soft lamp hanging above their heads caused a light glare off the window now, a more obscured New York danced behind their dinner.

The woman Phoebe saw in the re reflection, she barely recognized her, and that's when she knew she was ready to act. There were words that had to be spoken before any of this could be salvaged. She felt the demons rolling inside her soul as she began to speak.

She breathed in deeply and her eyes locked on one of her closest friends;

"That's not entirely true, Rachel, what you said earlier about love. I don't think you love any one of us. Because there's a difference, I've learned, from what we choose and what chooses us. So this is something that I have to say, and I don't care if you never forgive me for this…"

Those were the first of many sentences that shot out into the air from her mouth in efficient production.

There is no equivalent to how each word felt, but the closest is something like a very compacted war. Shells were clashing onto her wooden floor as fragments of warm flesh sprayed against food and walls. The heat and propulsion of bombs impacting their faces, contouring them with shock. The bullets were lodged underneath, over, and inside of their hearts, lungs, sides, and heads.

And all thought processes were 'we will never be the same again'

**Joey**

Joey made the first and only attempt to stop the massacre of relationships. Dropping his silverware he stood up to match Phoebe's eye level and said very simply and firmly, "Stop."

Phoebe matched his resolution without hesitation and gave a firm "no" before reloading a second wave. When she was ready she continued with her revelations.

The primary causality so far was Rachel. Phoebe hadn't even reached to critical concept of Rachel and Chandler. Shit.

Joey sat back down and felt Charlie's hand slide into his. She was trembling. As his eyes rotated around the table he realized probably everyone was trembling; internally at the least. Joey looked at Mike's face and realized he was clueless. His expression was a mixture of embarrassment and understanding as he looked up at his wife. And then….then there was Rachel. She seemed to just be calmly staring back at Phoebe; Joey knew she was dying by crucifixion.

Time-consuming and primal. Bleeding to death by non-fatal injuries.

Joey felt he had already caused her enough pain with his actions earlier; he wasn't going to watch the end of this too. He began to rise again, but a tug on his arm stopped him before anyone else noticed.

He looked down into her eyes and he knew…

**Charlie**

…her eyes were pleading up to his, hauntingly despondent. She said stay and every dialect of silent communications she could muster. 'I need you' shimmered through her eyes. She watched him hesitate, she saw him want to stay and at the same time she knew why he had to leave. Shit. Rachel, she thought. She felt him pull her arm upwards gently, asking her to follow. She shook her head without realizing and her eyes glanced towards Ross. She examined his body language say 'shit. Ross.' His eyes pleaded with hers, but she wasn't going to leave Ross. She looked back towards Phoebe, still shooting everyone with words at the head of the table. When she turned back towards Joey, she expected him to be gone. But he wasn't, he sat back down by her side. And kissed her cheek lightly but lingering. Charlie smiled. She could still taste him on her lips from their kiss earlier in the lobby. She wasn't sure how it happened. His eyes were sad, her lips were full, and there was a collision…before her thoughts could continue she felt someone else's attention on her and Joey…

**Mike**

….Mike observed the interaction of Charlie and Joey from across the table. Maybe one couple would survive the night he thought sadly. There would never be words for how sad he felt. All of his friends that he'd become so close to were now having the worse moments of their lives in his home.

He didn't care what their crimes were. Judgment was never one of Mike's characteristics. So to have everybody's relationships tossed into the air and shredded like a one act play was beyond horrible to him.

And their going to think he was apart of this Park Avenue ambush.

He understood what Phoebe felt she had to do.

But at every inch of his core, he disagreed immensely. His blue eyes shifted towards Rachel and he admired her self control quite immensely.

When Phoebe was acting strange throughout the week he had wrongly assumed that it was because of all the attempts at pregnancy, or maybe a fight with her sister or brother.

He never considered this… so much for their silent communication.

Then there it was, he almost missed it while lost in his thoughts, until now Phoebe was just mentioning how she discovered Rachel was having an affair, something about a park, something about a dress, and then something about Friday nights, and then there was a name…

**Chandler**

…Chandler's gaze ripped away from Monica as he heard his name tossed into the air above him. Phoebe's eyes narrowed as she explained a conversation with Monica on the balcony and some talk with Charlie on the phone. She definitely knew he was Friday nights.

Shit.

To his surprise, Monica didn't move at all. She didn't even look up. He began to wonder if she was still breathing.

He felt a leg move nervously next to his again and he reached out his hand and rested it on Rachel's knee, calming her for the eighth time that evening.

He sighed and saw Ross staring across the table at Rachel. He wasn't angry. He wasn't sad. He just seemed very tired all of a sudden.

All of a sudden Chandler felt as is his hand on Rachel's knee should be shot with a shotgun. He promptly removed it. And then proceeded to avoid Ross' brown eyes.

As tentative as Chandler intended to be around Ross, he was more worried about Monica and Rachel.

Rachel maintained intense contact with Phoebe as if to say 'I need to see you do this' , 'I need to see the way every wrinkle and freckle in your face contours as you do this, I need to remember.'

They should have done this…they should have told everyone in their own way, privately; like they planned to before _she_ did this. All of a sudden, Chandler noticed a barely checked resentment was fiercely rising up within him for…

**Phoebe**

….Phoebe stood above the individuals that had once been her life and at once she understood that they all hated her very much right now. But she was convinced she was merely doing what had to be done. As convinced as they are that they would have sacrificed their secrets in time, she knew they were wrong. Each one of them would have found a way to back out. It was so much easier to dance than to struggle through life.

She kept speaking, making sure very truth was covered and every detail of how she knew.

She noticed how Joey nearly left, and that saddened her greatly. Not because of his pain, but because of how important it was that they all deal with this.

She was glad when he stayed, although not quite sure why.

Phoebe saw Ross staring at her blankly.

So this is what he looks like when he's destroyed. No emotion, whatsoever.

He just seemed tired to her.

She felt Mike's disappointment boring into her side, but she had to continue.

She heard Monica's voice in her mind screaming "You knew!" on that beautiful balcony of contrived lights.

She saw the demons dancing in the New York sky through the window, with Judas Iscariot nodding his head appreciatively.

She listened to her heart.

And she knew she had to continue.

What she would never tell everyone was that each word, bullet, and explosion set off was ricocheting back into her as well.

She hoped that one day they would blame their actions and not her words. She knew in her soul that one of them probably already had pardoned her betrayal. It was in her eyes the moment she walked through the door, with her sin standing beside her. And she was the one that should have been the most infuriated….

**Rachel**

'It doesn't feel as horrible as I thought it would,' thought Rachel as numbness swept over her. It was the simple realization that what had to be done was in the process of being over with. She wasn't angry. She was just waiting.

Waiting to deal with all the chaos of mass destruction. Phoebe wasn't the obstacle. Ross and Monica were. She loved them both so much and now, she wasn't sure of anything they felt or were capable of doing.

Phoebe finished the last of her words and the room was once again occupied by the cold presence of silence. The ashes and smoke of war staggered up slowly from all the uneaten food, which now seemed blood soaked and worthless.

"Is this true?" Ross' deep voice rumbled solemnly. It wasn't an accusation. It truly was a question. He needed to hear it from her.

Rachel watched Phoebe sit back down, and she nodded her head as to say 'I'm sorry you had to be the one, I know they'll hate you for it'

Cautiously timing he r words, Rachel's voice emerged, and with it everybody's eyes narrowed on her.

Her voice broke in her first words, the promise of tears behind them; "yes…I am so, so sorry for our actions. I can't begin to say…how much I hate myself right now; this isn't how we wanted to tell you guys, it was just…" Rachel paused trying to find the words, while the table was settling in the dust of sorrow and revelation.

Rachel could barely make eye contact with anyone. When her eyes flickered across Joey's she knew what she had done was irreparable. He now realized that there was something more between her and Chandler.

After everything she lectured and screamed at him about…he was very close to the truth all along.

Although Phoebe didn't quite say that, she mentioned a plethora of Friday nights and Latin clubs, but never intimacy, just lies and deceit. Rachel knew he figured it out from their expressions of guilt; it was more than dancing. Everything about what they did was more.

She began to open her mouth in continuation but before a word crawl across her tongue, the quietest voice in the room spoke up resolutely…

**Monica **

… "Shut up," Monica said calmly, her eyes meeting Rachel's passionately. Emotion trickling strongly from behind the blue.

When did Monica know about Chandler and Rachel, it was the kiss Phoebe gave her when she arrived with Chandler by her side. It was the way they tensed up as Phoebe greeted them. And it was in the way her husband looked at her…as if to say 'It's Rachel. It's always been you Rachel'

The progression of the dinner was just her attempt to maintain herself.

"I'm sorry," Rachel said breathlessly. Tears were brimming her eyelids.

"but not enough, not to do it," Monica said her tone raising with every syllable.

"It was a mis---"Rachel began

" I HATE YOU," Monica screamed abruptly rising up from her chair which fell behind her suddenly, breaking on the wooden floor.

Murmurs of exclamations like 'waits Monica' and 'hey' sounded throughout the room from various mouths.

"NO," Monica answered to everyone at once. "I deserve to be angry, I trusted you"

Rachel eyes met Monica's behind blurring sobs. "I know, I'm so sorry."

Her body turned towards Chandler who was now taking his turn staring at the table.

"You, you just fucked me. You promised, you promised that there was no one else. I believed you"

Rachel spoke up, "he was trying to protect you…he wanted to tell you—"

"Shut up!" Monica exclaimed beating the table with her open hand. The china shook and a few glasses toppled over.

"I cried to you! I stayed in your home and….oh my God," Monica exclaimed her hands covering her mouth swiftly, "Monday night, Chandler wasn't trying to rape you was he"

"Mon no that was a mistake"

"BULLSHIT. The candles, your outfit, and even if you were waiting for Ross, Chandler would have never tried unless….unless you two have had sex…"

All eyes were back on Chandler and Rachel and their silence was enough.

It was matter of seconds and Monica was over the table screaming.

Her heels breaking into anything not wooden or metallic.

Before anyone could intervene Rachel was on the floor, with Monica punching and clawing wildly at any thing she could reach. The only name that could escape Rachel's lips as she reached to protect her stomach was…

**Ross**

'You know what its like' Ross thought as Joey lifted Monica up into the air, Charlie helped Rachel up, and Mike stood in between him and Chandler; Chandler was on the floor clasping his eye frantically, Ross' hand was bruised and throbbing from the impact.

'It's like an old 70s Vietnam picture, only personal like a dream. The kind when you know someone in your dream in some godforsaken Vietnam jungle is saying something extremely important, but there's to much shit exploding all around you to hear it. Bombs detonating in the jungle round you and when you finally hear them their speaking to you in some damn Romanian gibberish. Their last words finally reach you in English and they say, "You must do exactly what I told you or you'll die."

Then they look at you expectantly. I ask what to do and before I realize what's happening, pink ants come and carry me away into the sky. And she's looking up at me in disappointment like "I told you so." That's what this feels like'

It wasn't Phoebe's words because he really only heard the last part of it. The rest didn't make sense. It was their expressions that told him they had been together. That it was more.

And as the realization of what Friday nights really were dawned across his understanding he had violently took to punching Chandler. The blankness of his face had disappeared into tremendous hate. When Chandler was down and Mike in between them. Ross immediately calmed and walked past Mike. Mike attempted to stop him but Ross was entirely too strong and focused.

Joey tensed as Ross greeted him with a firm, "let go of her"

Immediately Joey understood and handed Monica to Ross. Monica's face was red and bruised from bumping into a wall in her earlier attack. Monica quickly folded herself into her brother's arms.

Without even looking down, Ross stepped over Rachel while cradling Monica and walked towards the apartment door.

When Phoebe stepped towards their path, Ross stopped her with one look, and then walked out of the staged massacre with Monica weeping by his side.

For the rest of the group, it was her words that brought about the revelation of things, yet for Monica, it was before that.

And it was much simpler than the grandeur of prepared words.

It was a kiss.

A kiss and the combination of circumstance, with ashes and debris being the only remnants of their friendships.


	21. Ash and Feathers

**Lightness and Weight**

_In the sixth century B.C.E Parmenides offered a world divided into pairs of opposites, the most ambiguous of which was lightness and weight._

_The question was which was better, to live a heavy or light life. _

_In the 1980s Milan Kundera surmised:_

"_The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground….the heavier the burden,_

_the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become…._

_Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes a man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."_

'What's best, to be crushed by the significant weight of truth and love. Or fly insignificantly through life unattached' Ross pondered the concept over and over again through his mind. He'd always assumed the weight of truth and love were worth it…but now….

It tossed and turned and slashed its way down into his heart.

He thought of Paris, and how maybe she should have never got of the plane.

Slow, full tears fell into his chest below.

He thought of all his years with Chandler, and how he wished chance gave him another college roommate.

The friends and family that had once given weight and meaning to his life, now were lifting up into the empty sky all around him.

The cab heaved and struggled tremendously with loose gravel on the West End part of Ithaca.

Tons of a cab.

Pounds of a man.

Weight of words.

And yet this event of motor travel was probably one of the most insignificant of his life. It was one of thousands, immemorial and common.

None of it had any real meaning; the means with which we choose to travel.

It was lighter than air. Automobiles and the currency we obtain them with; feathers.

The only things of solidarity in his life were crumbling in lifeless ashes beneath his feet.

Waves of lingering fires occasionally flashed through the black and charred debris.

His relationships were burning. Set ablaze by betrayal and revelations and fueled by all the gasoline that had been poured below it for days, months, years.

And they all knew except him and Monica.

Within the week at some point, they probably all knew.

He had met their eyes with a glare of indignation, as the smell of burning death rose up through Mike and Phoebe's apartment. Twelve years of friendships murdered, the relationships struggling for life, limp on the plush sallow carpet.

Ross almost wanted to apologize for all the invisible ash cluttering Phoebe's carpet but then…she was the one who lit the match.

And he felt the strong need to dislike her for it.

She chose her words carefully and almost calculated as her eyes met Rachel's and demanded the truth.

In the presence of everyone, she set ablaze any and everything that had real importance in his life. Anything of weight.

And in seconds left them lighter than ashes.

The burdens of his soul were crushing him and every step was a defeating endeavor.

So he walked, struggling underneath his own weight.

He had carried his sister into the street and sent her back to her Westchester house.

He kissed her forehead.

He promised he'd be back soon. So he got in a cab. He rode for hours. He stepped out of the cab.

And now he walked again.

He walked aimlessly through the black and orange night; milky smog mixed with sharp suburban lights. Shadows of colors, and colors of shadows played silently in his light brown eyes. The pavement hard and sharp under his leather shoes.

"Hey!"

Ross turned forcibly on his heels and cocked his head slowly in the direction of the shout. For fleeting seconds hope flashed through his eyes.

Maybe…one the guys had followed him. He never really wanted to be alone. Even when he threw his fists.

Masses of weight hitting other masses of weight.

He knew what he was really saying with his actions was something resembling resignation and defeat. Someone that needed a hand to help him understand; understand this process of what you value in life suddenly becoming insignificant and fleeting. Ashes strewn through violent winds.

They will never be whole again. They will never have the same mass as they did before.

All for what. For truth?

Fuck truth.

He could have gone his whole life fucking truth.

His eyes searched the dark neighborhood street behind him, scanning through the mundane objects of the middle-class.

Trashcans neatly sitting on manicured edges, sprinklers sounding away with steady ticks, all the houses were dark around him.

The low hanging clouds billowed in the background as if they were ready to devour the shining roof tiles of the houses.

"Hey!"

It was louder this time, with something forced underneath it. Full of urgency and irritation.

Ross paused and waited for the voice to close the distance.

Then suddenly his cab lurched to a stop in front of him. Ross shuffled a few steps back in surprise.

It had come from a side road to his left he obviously didn't notice. But it soon resonated with him that he must have just walked from it. The cab had been hidden by the thick line of greenery; shaped bushes and trimmed trees.

The driver's round red face poked out of the open window, smudged and gray, and with a grimace yelled too loudly for suburban tranquility, "Pay the fare, asshole! Are you deaf! I've been following you for four minutes, for christ's sake I'm in Ithaca!"

There was a process of more weight being shifted and thrown and beat.

The weight of a fistfight, in the context of significant life events, was less than the worth of dirt.

Five minutes later Ross was inhaling and exhaling heavily the late night air. The act of breathing was piercing his lungs and disorienting him. He fell to the pavement below.

A few feet away was older cab driver whose arm was distorted the impact of his fall.

Freshly cut lawns, gas, and sweat. His mind churned in a rampant production of thoughts, one of which including 'why the fuck _was_ he in Ithaca'. He shouldn't be here. But it was all irrelevant now, because here he was. Pressed to the concrete from the weight of his emotions, he reached over to the man's neck and felt for a pulse.

Shit.

His hands were covered with dirt and gravel and blood. He wiped them on his long black coat and felt for the pulse again.

His heart paused while he tried to sense any pulsating from the individual lying unconscious next to him.

When he found it, it was strong and steady.

Lights from the windows around him begun to flicker on in alarm, followed porch and flashlights. The moon even seemed to peek from behind her white blankets to aid with her accusatory shine.

The night suddenly appeared less milky.

Before his mind could process his thoughts, his feet were tearing his tall, athletic frame through spacious front yards, well groomed trees, and decorated back yards.

Branches and roots reached out for his feet viciously as he stumbled and recovered keeping his breakneck pace.

He felt thin rivers of warm blood falling down his tan face. He darting across a quiet living room's bay window and caught a reflection of himself flying off of the glass.

His suit torn in places and red shimmering like beads of diamonds off body.

Fragments of murdered plants buried in his hair and clothes.

Almost there.

He was then running up hill, cutting through someone's wooded backyard, slipping on the recently watered vegetation.

The ground leveled suddenly and his expensive shoes his wife had bought him for last year's birthday possessed the traction of a marble on glass.

His feet flew out from under him and he was plummeting through the pitch black air shaded by nearby trees.

They reached out into the blackness like charred limbs of the earth, desperate for anything that came within their grasp.

Gravity ripping his weight from the air above.

180 pounds.

Weightless emotional ash occupying his heart.

He felt as if he was flying through the air with the weight of a damp feather, the moon kept her back turned.

The shadows swallowing him whole as his descent continued.

He landed into his death at 12:01, a mere minute after midnight.

His beautiful brown eyes closed in sorrow and defeat. The world fading away into distant happenings of betrayal and shouting.

'What did central perk smell like?'

He thought casually as his consciousness begun to elude him. He saw his daughter high above him somewhere in the night's sky, laughing and waving.

Retrospectively he thought:

'Do you know those homeless attempts at evangelists that shout, proclamations of the apocalypse from the entrances of abortion clinics, courtrooms, and city libraries….saviors of white collar America.

If I could I would shoot each one in their heads five times.

The end of the world for a vast majority of men will have nothing to do with divine fires.

I'm afraid the end of life is much less heavy than that.

It's surprisingly light.

There usually involves a warm old bed, a hospital, a living room, or even automobiles or planes, or the night's quick embrace.

The end of my world was a simple process of carrying my sister out of a Park Avenue apartment and then taking a cab to an empty backyard. And now it's cold. It's cold.'

He thought about all the random little pieces of his life, time would allow.

He could hear Rachel say she was sorry from the depths of her soul to the recesses of his mind.

And he could…

Silence closed his thoughts about what he could do next. The night filled in around him.

The same as it had minutes before he was even there.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko once said reflectively, somewhere in the faded years before this day:

"In any man who dies,

There dies with him,

His first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die, but worlds die in them."

Therefore if the death of a man is the death of worlds within, what is the weight of this occurrence?

Is it heavier or lighter?

Is there more or less significance?

With great fate and dignity we perceive our lives arrogantly, with assumptions of destiny. This arrogance weighs us down with pride and yet makes our priorities insignificant. Perhaps men are great derivations of divine purpose. Perhaps it's a game of chance.

How much does our existence weigh?

Lighter than air when we focus trivialities. Heavier than planets when we love.

What is it you hunger for? What is the currency with which you acquire what you want?

Is it light or is it heavy.

Ross fell into the bankrupt repository of emotion and violence, because he was lighter than air with nothing tethering him to his life. His relationships were fresh ashes swirling around his head. Overnight they had become weightless.

And yet the guilt of it all…of failure, crushed him into darkness that lies below.

That lies below us all.

What was the worth of a man, and all the worlds within him, if a all that remained of a sensitive, beautiful, and brilliant father, husband, brother, and best friend was a broken man lying dead in the small manicured backyard, alone forgotten by light, behind some one's 250,000 dollar house, while its occupants watched Jay leno within.

His existence fading into countless other existences with mundane ends.

Is this heavy or light.


	22. Revelations

Friday

She had been dancing for so long among the stars.

Escaping old responsibilities and clinging onto new ones

It was the most unnatural sight

To see her figure, collapsed along an apartment wall

A fallen, disgraced ballerina of urban life ….

He paused in characteristic hesitation. Stars and ashes falling around him unseen, though, he felt their presence.

Singeing his pale lips, casting grayish shades over his newly resurrected heart.

He heard it slowing within the cavity of his chest.

Guilt overwhelming all his senses.

As Phoebe and Mike busied themselves clearing the debris and food from their oak table and floor, Chandler pushed his feet to meet Rachel along the left wall, underneath a Buffet original.

Joey and Charlie had given their solemn goodbyes and regrets tastefully hours ago.

Rachel's frame was decidedly in the same position as the moment her husband stepped over her.

In her face was the most suppressing sadness, anyone had ever seen.

No one knew what to say, so they didn't say much; except for him….

Chandler bent his knees and lowered his angular face to her soft features.

Her eyes staring blankly passed him into the city skyline.

He reached out a slow hand to lift her up.

Immediately her consciousness returned to her surroundings and her eyes flashed a sharp warning at the man crouched in front of her.

"Don't," she said resolutely, keeping her hand on her flat stomach, as she lifted her tired body from the plush carpet below.

Invisible ashes cascading form her shoulders in black waterfalls.

Her body was bruised and sore from Monica's fists, from Phoebe's words, from Ross' ….lack there of.

Ross. His name choked her thoughts. She felt him killing her from the insides, making her skin feel unbearable.

She flinched in unimaginable anguish and fell back into the wreckage below.

Chandler wanted desperately to put out a hand, but history taught him otherwise. Instead he put his hands over his head and looked away in hopelessness.

The antique clock mounted against the ashen walls glared12:01 back at him.

A minute after midnight.

Rachel was sobbing desperately again.

Mike stopped Phoebe from going to her, and instead led his wife to the kitchen, giving Chandler and Rachel privacy.

Chandler looked back down at his best friend.

"Rachel…" he said, as pain and rejecting weaved in and out of his scratched voice like the blues.

"I'm sorry," he offered in vain.

Rachel pressed her back against the wall and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Heaven was neatly blocked off by pretentious Park Avenue brick and ceiling.

"I just can't….It doesn't matter anymore Chandler, this is my fault, "Rachel whispered slowly exhaling heavily afterwards as if each word was the release of cement block

She shuddered as he crumpled against the wall next to her.

"You can't even touch me…" he whimpered, his words betraying his calm exterior. Rachel was killing him with every action. The massacre of the last supper was far from finished.

"No," she replied without the hesitation. Her eyes refusing to meet his.

He attempted to hold his stare but his clear blue eyes but his eyes stung from oncoming salty tears.

"Rachel, we'll get through this, its you and its me, we've been through hell for over amonth now….don't do this," he pleaded with his chest heaving.

Rachel's eyes pierced him. "Chandler, don't do this? Don't do what? My husband just _stepped _over me. My best childhood friend _attacked_ me….and you're asking me not to react"

"No….I'm saying….I just think you shouldn't take it out on me, that we should support each other right now and be together on this."

Rachel stood up slowly and looked out of the window for a long time without saying anything at all.

New York City's morning spread out in front of her, and then her calm voiceemerged slow and fixed.

"We made too many mistakes this time; I'm going to go to the doctor as soon as he's available this morning—"

Chandler's eyes flared as he jumped to his feet. "NO…you will not take that away from us. That is all we have left. Our mistakes are not its mistakes. Don't do this, I know that's not who you are"

His voice boomed as tears flew from his face.

Rachel turned around, her face contoured from sadness as her tears re-emerged as well.

"Do you know who I am Chandler! Because I sure as hell don't know any more. They hate us!...Do you understand that. I've got to go find Ross…." Rachel shifted her attention to gathering her things while Chandler gazed at her in shock.

As Rachel neared the exit for the dining room, Chandler said almost inaudibly.

"You kill the one thing left in my life. And I will never forgive you. _I_ will hate you."

Rachel laughed slowly until it shook her petite frame.

Her black dress stirred as she breathed in deeply.

"Chandler…" she said quickly. His head fiercely directed towards the carpet in anger at her reaction.

"Chandler, LOOK AT ME," she yelled and his blue eyes ripped into hers.

"I would never, ever do that. And besides it's not my right. I'm going because, something feels wrong…."

A dawn or realization passed over his face as he looked at her body in horror.

"Oh god, she, she, Monica….no," He stammered on in disbelief as Rachel slowly lifted her dress past her tan thighs and black lace underwear, stopping at her stomach.

An intricate pattern of blue and purple bruises had loudly not only decorated her arms and chest, but a significant portion resided on her stomach as well.

The product of their dancing, threatened by the dancing of Monica's fists, had resulted in contusions dancing across Rachel's stomach, made it clear to both, that irony was life's cruelest thread among our connective actions.

**Mike and Phoebe**

As soon as they entered the kitchen, Phoebe yanked her hand out of Mike's hold. Mike's expression widened in surprise. They were about to have their first major argument as husband and wife.

"Don't pull me out of my own dining room!" Phoebe contended, her green eyes glowing and ready for a fight.

"I was helping you avoid making another mistake!" Mike explicated with his tone rising slightly.

"Well, did I ask for your help? I've known each one of them a lot longer than you. I think I know when they need me,"

"Are you blind, Phoebe I love you, but you have got realize you can't just do that to people, you can't just unload all this shit on their lives and then run into help. You had no right to ambush them,"

Phoebe rested her weight against the polished pink granite counter behind her, after setting the plates into their deep sink.

"So you don't support me either." She turned away not even looking for a response. Her eyes were watery and distant.

"No, I support you, that's why I'm stopping you right now"

"By keeping me away from my friends. I'm a big girl."

"Are you sure they're still your friends," Mike said, turning off the stove lamp and turning on the small crystal lamp hanging above their heads.

The white light bathed their spacious modern kitchen with a surreal glow. The patterned cream marble stone floor seemed thick and warm. The small window above their oven held Phoebe's cold reflective stare.

Mike unbuttonedthe top of his white collar shirt andbegan to put all their pristine silver utensils into their dishwasher.

"Fuck you!" said Phoebe loudly.

He paused then turned to face his wife:

"PLEASE, yes, Fuck me," Mike shouted, "Then, maybe, JUST maybe, I could get some real interaction with you! Maybe you could stop walking around like some damn martyr, encumbered by the world. Maybe if you had talked to me about all this, we could have helped them individually and privately.

But Phoebe we've destroyed them. You wanted to help? Where is the help, who's feeling helped. You did this for yourself. Because you felt betrayed by the lies. And coincidentally the one of the few people who escaped being beaten or bruised with literal limbs or words was you. This was the most fucking selfish thing I've ever witnessed."

Phoebe didn't need to say anything; her heated stare alone caused Mike to apologize for his tone and language with her.

"Sorry." He shook his head in defeat.

After a few seconds she inquired slow and strained, "What would you have done?"

Anger still laced each word dangerously.

Mike raised his eyes to hers steadily.

"Pheebs, it's not a hypothetical question of what would I have done, It's what I did do. I saw them…."

"What…" Phoebe mouthed desperately.

"During one of my piano gigs, some Latin night club not too far a way from here. They didn't notice I was playing that night, and I had to leave before I could say anything. Phoebe that was weeks ago. And you know how I responded? I left it to their actions. Whatever you believe in right or wrong, or fate, or something, you have to believe in balance. That eventually everything comes to light, everything. It's not my place.

"Besides it's not as if I walked in on them. They really were just dancing. And I know everybody thinks they had an affair but…." Mike wondered off into uncertainty.

"But what..." Phoebe entertained his dramatics.

"But people see and hear what they want to sometimes. I can honestly say, I don't think they had an affair. That's not the way they came off the night I saw them. They just looked liked they wanted space away from everything."

"Then how do you explain tonight!" Phoebe asked sharply, "They didn't exactly deny having sex."

"Okay, but they never said 'yes we have had sex', they just,….look, my dad has been in politics for a long time and I've learned to read people very well because of being dragged around on all the campaigns and debates. So to me, they just looked like they had a secret they wanted to keep, that was worth everybody thinking worse."

"What secret is worth that?" Phoebe said quickly, her eyes rolled slightly.

Mike casually walked over to their fruit basket and grabbed a green apple from the array of bananas, apples, and grapes.

"Phoebe, with some secrets, if we don't know, it's probably because we're not supposed to."

As Mike exited the kitchen, Phoebe was left in the company of her demons, and for the first time she saw a different perspective. After contemplation and the passing of minutesshe felt Judas' presence nearby and so she went to the island in the middle of the kitchen.

She realized Mike was right.

Slowly she whispered into the crisp air conditioned area, "Judas?"

She thought she heard a faint murmur of agitation in response, yet she continued;

"How do you know that He wouldn't have been crucified without your help? ….if it's at least possible that the priests would have found Him anyways, then, your betrayal was for you, on your timing….wasn't it? It _is_ the most selfish act. And you realized that didn't you, that's why you killed yourself, another selfish endeavor."

With that she cut off the light and filled a glass with water, as she walked out ofher Park Avenue kitchen Phoebe smiled as she felt more demons being left behind with each step, smearing into the floor.

She wasn't going to follow the path of Judas Iscariot.

Though she had betrayed her friends, on her terms, she was going to do everything to make up for it on theirs.

**Monica **

"Mrs. Gellar-Bing, I'm sorry, there must be some misunderstanding, because upon request to destroy the reproductive items you and your husband deposited, we have it here on record that they've been destroyed already…..recently, and that you were fully aware of this. Even if they weren't destroyed there's no way we could honor a request this final over the phone without both parties."

The receptionist's seasoned tone resonated with her strongly as she put down her greygoose vodka.

"That's….that's wrong….," she stammered as alcohol burned her throat slowly.

"I'm sorry, but The Sperm and Embryo Bank of NJ, Inc.'s twenty four hour service is precisely so we are up to date on all transactions and operations. I'm also afraid this is all I can disclose over the telephone, if you'd like to see one of our specialists in person we could arrange---"

Monica hung up the phone resolutely, its plastic bouncing off the shelves on her bedroom wall.

'Guess he beat me to it,' she thought, delayed by the alcohol. Then a wide smile crept its way across her beautiful face because she knew that meant it was over.

Every semblance of a future between her and chandler had been put to death. The sperm and ova they had worked so hard to secure from each others infertile or hostile environments were now ashes too. She hated him and everything associated with him.

She heard a car park from outside, and she stumbled over to the window to greet her brother, her tear stained face gazing silently from the second floor through the window.

But it wasn't her brother; it was her neighbor Janice, who had moved in after all. Disappointment like a child forgotten during Christmas dimmed her face. It was a late hour. As Monica watched Janice hurry silently across her yard in a tight black leopard pattern shirt, she couldn't help but smirk.

Maybe she's having an affair as well, must be in the water.

Monica almost preferred he had an affair with her instead of Rachel, if affairs were to be preferred at all.

But now her unfocused mind drifted towards the realm of Ross. Worry for her brother appeared in soft wrinkles and creases across her forehead.

She dug down into her vanity table dresser until she was able to come up with that Ithaca number she had almost forgotten about.

As she dialed, with the loud introduction of each number, she became more and more certain that this is where Ross would be. Yet that didn't stop the worry from building up under her skin, that something else had gone horribly wrong.

While her cell phone rang, Monica gathered her light jacket and keys, and swiftly left into the night looking for her brother, too anxious to wait for an answer.

Gladly leaving behind her an empty house and waning glass of vodka.

**Rachel **

At 3:08 am, Rachel Gellar conceded defeat. The city loomed around her withall the mysterious workings of the gloomy hour. Street lights bathed circles of sidewalks in orange and yellow, but none of them illuminated the figure of her husband in the city sidewalks.

She had walked for what felt like days and now her legs staunchly protested the will of her mind.

'Come on, keep going' her mind pleaded with her body as it stopped resolutely on an apartment stoop.

'Fine, you win for now, five minutes'

Her body sat down in response. It wasn't long before the tears that had been chasing behind her caught up.

They leaped into her heart and soul and began to rip her apart all over again.

Shrill sobs escaped her insides once more as she rested her head on the grimy brick wall to her left.

She was an emotional nuclear site of destruction.

"Ross," faintly emerged from her lips. Beads of sweat traveling across her skin, into her dress.

Her heels were worn and broken.

And she never had a chance of noticing the older, haggard man who had been following her for 15 blocks.

Now confident that they were alone, the man with leathery tan skin and loose brown teeth approached Rachel with an odd grin of conquest.

A woman like her, walking in hours like this, in a dress like that, in a city like this, demands attention, he reasoned in his mind. 'it would be wrong to ignore her.'

He pulled out his thin silver knife.

He would never be able to understand that the cuts he would give her body would never match the ones on her insides already.

The putrid smell of his body reached Rachel four feet before he ever did.

As she looked up in disgust she saw first his hands fiddling with his belt at her eyelevel. Her mind struggled to process the events happening in front of her.

1.5 seconds passed and then she screamed.

Surprised, he slapped her face into the wall beside her.

Immediately she was stunned into silence.

He smiled a broken smile and then proceeded to expose himself. Rachel fought off her instincts to gag or run, as something that felt like a blade grazed the skin of her neck.

"I dare you," the man said mockingly, his breath was dead and thick in the night's moist air.

He used his open hand wipe the sweat from his forehead and push his thinning reddish blonde hair back.

Even in the shadowed abandoned stoop, Rachel could see that he was badly scarred and scratched.

This probably wasn't his first time raping girls, women….

He taunted her, pressing himself near her head, rubbing against her hair.

Despite the numbness her body felt throughout the evening, this encounter was piercing through her like sharp electrical currents.

She saw warm blood trickling down onto the pavement below her, and realized it was from her head.

Tears were now frozen in her eyes, as they darted back and forth at the street.

And then there he was, a figure in the night running through puddles of light at breakneck speed.

"Ross!" she screamed as the rapist turned into an incoming fist.

The older man fell into the sidewalk hard, as Ross stomped his shoes into his chest. The man coughed loudly rolling over onto his side.

Ross continued to strike him with fast punches to his face and chest. The sounds of loud thumps and grunts echoed in Rachel's mind as she drifted out of unconsciousness. She fell backwards and as her eyes closed they were blinded by the glare of streetlights, blocking all the other electrical stars of New York City.

"Ross," she muttered contently before everything faded away.

**Joey and Charlie-**_1 hour earlier-_

"Rachel!" Joey and Charlie exclaimed simultaneously as Rachel's slim figure darted past their sidewalk's bench.

But she was in her own world, frantic and desperate to find Ross. Joey and Charlie understood that at once.

They had been outside for a while just talking and holding hands; being grateful for the simplicity that they had in the company of one another.

No ashes….no affairs…..no deaths.

The slow and light rain trickling down over their faces had washed it all away.

They were in a sensual kiss as Rachel flew by out of the corners of their eyes. Now they sat helplessly watching her hair swing wildly behind her as she jogged in heels.

Worry was glazed over both their eyes.

"I'm sure she'll go home. There's no way she's going to find him at this hour." Charlie speculated aloud.

But Joey's eyes never left Rachel's back.

Her frame struggling to conquer all the miles of distance the city threw her way.

She wasn't dancing anymore. It was all painfully concrete and real now.

Something in Joey stirred and for a split second he desperately wanted to follow her.

Charlie said, "Go."

And Joey had to fight for a moment to realize she saw right through him.

He turned to face her, "Can I tell you something,"

Charlie felt her throat choking in anticipation of what could only be hurtful words.

"I guess…"

"I'd to this all again. Because it took a lot words and broken relationships for me to realize I don't love her. I sincerely thought I did…but….I think I just felt like I needed something real like everybody else had. And she was one of the only girls I've known that have become my best friend. It felt right because it was there. Because it was her. Rachel was right; it was convenient for me to have those feelings for her. It was easy. But Charlie it's not her. Everything about us is a choice. I choose you…"

At that moment a cab was stopped at the traffic light in front of them. As Charlie looked up into Joey's brown eyes, he motioned his head towards the vehicle, and she nodded slowly before smiling.

"It's my choice, huh"

Joey nodded in confirmation.

The cab's radio crackled through the night's air about political events, North Korea, and US urban evacuation strategies in the event of a terrorist attack.

It was interrupted by the cab's headquarters radio blaring about a missing cab number somewhere in West Ithaca.

The city breathed in all around them with her lights and glass.

Yet for Charlie and Joey nothing else was relevant, as their lips found one another in a passionate kiss and then stepped down into the car, two survivors of a war, escaping in a yellow city cab.

* * *

next update will be soon guys i promise. -float 


	23. Confessions of Strangers

Confessing Strangers

My name is….it's irrelevant. You'll never know me. I'll never know you. Names don't mean much of anything in places like this. But in all my twenty four years of bartending.

There is one I'll never forget.

Jake.

Jake and his story, the one that he dropped in with this morning and casually changed our lives forever. It was early, probably around 4a.m. But here at The Point, that's usual.

Early blue collar workers and late beard scuffled alcoholics.

Small but enough.

All kinds of stories walk there way in and out of our wooden doors, from all sorts of sizes and faces.

Less than 1 sticks to memory.

And usually….usually they're the kind of dark narrative accounts that make you want to give up on the concept of humanity and sleep with a shotgun under your pillow.

But today…..anyone with two feet and a sense of consciousness would have known that this story, pouring from Jake's memory, is the kind that taps right into the soul of New York.

And the funny thing is Jake's a kid. Barely in his 20s.

He walks in with desperate self importance. Like this story was burning him until he spit out.

Despite his attempt to look tough and lowly. He was obviously blue blooded, no matter how diluted.

He gives one order for a glass of water and a bartender confession sad and poignant. I will never, for as long as I live, forget what he said:

"Call me Jake….but…know that I'm nobody.

Let that be said first and foremost.

I'm not your brother; I'm not your friend…

I'm not your son and I'm not your father.

I live my life without much definition and shape.

Especially without the shitty technicality of labels.

I'm 21 and I don't owe anything to anyone. "

He shifted in his chair uncomfortably as he frowned. His handsome features seemed to be in deep contemplation.

Dark wavy hair fell until his face, covering his green eyes.

He continued quickly;

"Got to New York City a few weeks ago and already I can tell this city was meant for losers without a name like me.

Renting a studio apartment with six other guys. Haven't spoken to my parents in months. Pretty sure I need to visit a clinic after a few vague hookups, but who's got the time to worry.

This city's dancing through time and it doesn't give a damn if you fall behind.

But to be completely honest with you, because they say the best conversations you'll ever have in life are with a stranger, to be truthful, I 'm getting tired of living this way.

Hell, I'm not such a badass. I'm from Iowa and the son of a republican Senator. I've been running for a long time. But the funniest shit happened to me thirty minutes ago.

This woman was being assaulted by this freak with a knife. I'd been watching him for a few blocks just waiting to see what he was going to try.

Not because I'm chivalrous. I think I was bored and it promised excitement. I'm not the good guy. I'm the opportunist.

Anyways I take care of the guy with a number of good hits.

I didn't mean to hurt him so badly, but as I got closer to him and saw her, she looked just like one of my sisters, or like one of my friend's sisters, and I just loose it. And felt good.

In the back of my mind, I know we'll never really be able to accuse him of anything worthy of getting him locked up for the amount of time he deserves so instead I make it so he'll never rape another female again.

I won't say what I did; I'll just say I hid the knife pretty damn well afterwards.

I hailed a cab, which took a while, and paid off the driver to take him to some random flat in Brooklyn.

YOU pay anyone enough money and this city and you can kill their mother without consequences.

You never know the sick shit you'll find up any New York street".

With that a few grunts and nods go around the bar. Jake from Iowa if you only knew what we knew happens in our city. But it's not worth the interruption, so he gets to what he's so desperate to confess.

"Anyways, so there's this girl lying in front of me and I don't want to leave her.

There's even a little bit of blood, so I know I need to keep her conscious.

I shout and yell, and shake her and I get nothing.

Not from her.

And not even one apartment window light comes on.

Fuck New York right.

So I remember that when I was running towards that guy, she screamed out a name, it was Ross.

She thought I was some guy named Ross. Boyfriend, husband, I didn't know.

But I figure this name must mean something to her because she kept whimpering it all the way until she fell unconscious."

By now a small crowd of listeners had gathered around the small wrap around bar. Sometimes I think we're attracted the ugly things in life more than the beautiful. Jake breathes and then carries on:

"So I say, hey it's Ross, and immediately her eyes begin to flicker until she's staring right at me and she smiles, and tears are flowing down her eyes, she's too weak to pull me into a hug but I feel her try. So I hug her. I ask her if she's hurt and she sits up and says she's dying.

I don't know what else to do other than check her.

So I'm asking her to lift limbs and try to stand up. She's fine except for a few bruises, which in my opinion did not occur from this attack.

I ask her if she'll be okay and she looks at me squarely again and just says 'you don't understand….it's all ashes, I'm dying, everything's dying'.

She's so gorgeous and sad, I'm captivated. I just say 'please tell me everything, maybe I can help'

And we both knew that was lie; there was nothing I could do. But she told me everything. I'm sure she's never told anybody all the things she told me.

So I sit and let her talk.

And we forget about the world around us.

She tells me about the death of 12 fucking years of friendships.12 years!

She tells me about all their individual relationships. She tells me what _Ross_ means to her, about their history. And I tear up. I never cry. She tells me how she got scared of life and how she knew a friend who was just as scared. One of her friends of twelve years.

She was scared of losing life's passion. He was scared of losing his heart.

So they start talking and become closer after his two little twins die.

They develop a ritual on the night they're both free and start dancing in themed clubs, trying to find something different and new. Some escape. Eventually they become inseparable. She says it's not being in love. It's just a deep understanding. All I can say is my wife isn't going to have one of those deep understandings with any one but me. Anyways….

It scares them how close they've become because they're both married into the same family, so they feel a need to keep it sacred.

This is polite for secret.

Then one Friday night her friend, I think his name was something weird like Candle, he tells her something that nobody else knows, not even his wife.

They're dancing and he looks into her eyes and says 'I'm going to ask you to do something for me, that I have no right to ask……'

And after hearing what this huge, gigantic thing was, she says without hesitation 'yes'.

Because that's how much she loves him. That's how much she cares for his happiness…."

Jake paused as the crowd had doubled, even at 4:00 am in the morning. It was the loser and early worker blue collar types he surmised.

Most eyes were rimmed with tears.

Others seemed to be contemplating when they ever had anything in their life nearly as significant.

A voice speaks up from the blend of New York citizens and states in amazement, "So she agreed to mother his child"

As Jake nods his head a series of "wows" and sharp intakes of breath erupt throughout the small bar/restaurant.

By now he knows that he's enthralled us all:

"So anyways, I'm just as amazed. He tells her that after their children died, he and his wife deposited their sperm and eggs successfully, despite all odds, in a cryobank.

For a long time they had just forgotten about children.

This poor guy has been living with so much guilt that the only way he feels he can salvage his marriage is giving his wife something she feels he let die in the first place.

But she's incapable of having a successful pregnancy herself.

So there's Rachel.

This woman who loves them both and they love too. She offers her body that night. It's crazy and they both know it, but they were so damn desperate to get back their loved ones.

And Rachel loves and understands Chandler so well.

She knows how much he needs this.

Maybe Monica would be happy again.

Her best friend could live again.

Chandler would stay.

She knew it was selfish but maybe even Ross would become more attentive when he saw what a wonderful wife he had because of the sacrifice she was making for his sister.

Candle, no it's Chandler, had contemplated on asking her for a while, because of how close they had gotten, so he had the grade A Embryos already waiting to implanted.

He had combined them about a month ago and had all other separate reproductive samples destroyed.

They could only afford the one attempt anyway.

He didn't tell anyone, especially not his wife, because he reasoned that these embryos had like a 10 success rate of developing into full pregnancy and he didn't think his wife, Monica, could handle another loss.

No matter how small, not even microscopic.

As far as Rachel's husband goes, she wanted terribly to tell Ross because of how close their group was and because of how sincere Ross is, and because her body was his, but there was no way Monica wouldn't detect something.

And that meant not telling her brother until they were sure.

90 chance of failure.

If the embryo had taken to the womb after the 14 day waiting period, they would tell them.

If not, they would die with the secret failure.

Chandler knew Monica would be ultimately overjoyed if it worked. Rachel knew Ross would sacrifice anything for his sister. That was their rationale and little else mattered.

So that night after Chandler asked her on the dance floor, they called their loved ones.

Rachel said she'd be with her sister all night.

Chandler said he was with his friend Joey and had had too much to drive.

So the deception grew….

They took Chandler's car directly from the club and drove all the way to

New Jersey, where his specialist was and placed the embryos the following morning. Rachel, said most of Saturday morning was a haze of indistinct worry and joy.

Two weeks passed and an embryo had taken.

But their situations at home hadn't improved at all. Despite their earnest efforts.

Ross was involved with work more than ever. Monica was spiraling further and further out of control.

Rachel even planned on confessing everything to Ross, Monday night. She prepared a dinner and waiting in a candle lit living room, only for an intoxicated Chandler to crash it.

She thinks in the back of her heart on some subconscious level he was trying to stop her.

Monica walked in on them in the candlelit apartment and all hell broke loose.

Though they would never admit it with their words, Chandler and Rachel began to regret the pregnancy.

What kind of family could they create for this new life?

Monica and Chandler had apparently been fighting a lot, and so he put off telling her even more. She even asked Chandler openly last night if their was somebody else.

All he had to say was yes, 'a baby'.

But he didn't.

So they suffered.

Eventually one of their friends suspected there was an affair going on between the two.

She confronted them in front of all their friends. Monica accused them of having sex.

They couldn't tell her about the baby like that. So they remained silent, trapped in their own guilt for having to lie so much already. And they would be lying if they said they hadn't developed a deeper level with one another, but it wasn't sex.

The somebody else was never Rachel.

It was what grows inside her.

Though she had admitted to me that in those two nights in New Jersey, she and Chandler were inseparable. They shared a few innocent kisses but that was it, and both attribute it to the intense emotions of conceiving a baby.

But despite their good intentions, things crumpled around them, and they were stuck somewhere in between right and wrong.

They were each other's only support, because they both knew the truth. It killed them.

No one was ready for the truth. They knew they may have to consider other options like abortion or adoption.

This killed them both, but they knew it was the result of their_ "passionate"_ actions one Friday night.

Anyways, they were guilty in the eyes of all their friends.

Monica attacked her and Ross attacked him. There are bruises on everyone, visible and not.

And now the life that they had danced into conceiving could be hanging on a thread, because of the woman they did this for in the first place."

Jake took a sip of his water and stared solemnly at the crowd as he noticed there wasn't a dry eye.

"Could you imagine the sacrifice, not only that you already made, but the ones you're probably going to have to make because of your original gift. She's broken.

Rachel was dying when I found her. She had run after Ross, to tell him everything. After all that shit she was still fighting for her friends. But she never found him. Instead she just ended up talking to me for a while, dying slowly. 12 years of love turned to ashes.

I thought I knew sacrifice. In all my years of running away from Iowa, from my parents, from girlfriends, I never imagined desperately running towards something, through a city like this, sacrificing everything. All of this, their lives torn apart from what began as dancing.

They say the best conversation you'll ever have is with a stranger. That's because the exchange costs nothing. There is no sacrifice. No judgment that matters.

I walked her home, and when she thanked me it was as if she was thanking my soul, it was as if she was thanking the city that brought me to her, and it was as if she was thanking the existence of all humanity.

And then she did the most surprising thing:

With a shine in her blue eyes she smiled at me through all her tears and said:

'Love like this, sacrifice like this, just try to be more honest than me'

And she hugged my soul and I hugged hers.

She asked me to hum something I liked; and the only thing that came to mind was Janis Joplin's soulful summertime. As I hummed out the strong notes and lyrics.

She began to move back and forth in my arms under her door way, whispering 'thank you's'.

We were dancing for only minutes before she smiled and closed her door, but it felt like a lifetime. I asked her what she was going to do now and all she could say was,

'I'll wait…."

That was all I could think about as I wondered back into the streets"

With that Jake put down his empty glass and worked his way through the small crowd. When he got to the door, he looked back at me and smiled.

"People should dance more in this place. I think I'm going back to Iowa…to wait"

"For what" I ask.

"For dances, for purgatories, for revelations, for strangers..."

My name is irrelevant.

I'm a bartender.

His name is Jake.

He's nobody.

And for the rest of our lives….

In all the dances we'll have

We'll never forget that story

* * *

Thanks for reading this all guys. I know it's a lot. Thanks for the reviews. I'm glad it's beginning to make sense for a lot of you. I hope this chapter does because it's a lot of explaination. Dance isn't over, despite how conclusive this seems.It's not the end. Roughly 3 more chapters left. I'll try to update soon. 


	24. Revolution

Revolution

He was dreaming of Paris

How could death ask him not to?

There were gardens, and golden bread, and rivers, and croissants and …

Cotton beds.

…With warm gold sheets draped over, under, in, around….

And small beads of water; tan wet skins, fresh from showers.

Crackling of laugher from another room.

And every laugh, tone and texture was known.

How could he not dream…how could death ask him not to.

He should have been dead.

Texas and John F. Kennedy, in the middle of a smoldering American parade route kind of dead

But he wasn't.

There was a revolution stirring up from his bones and flesh.

A REVOLUTION.

Label it French; Industrial…..whatever makes it easier to take.

Life was choking back into his lungs.

Ross Gellar survived the calculated assassination of his love life, why the hell would the sharp drop of an empty pool in a dark backyard kill him.

Consciousness rang back into the inside of his skull as throbbing pain erupted suddenly. He clinched his white teeth and slammed his eyelids shut.

He tried to breathe a sharp intake of air, but murky un-cleaned pool water flooded into his chest.

His body sputtered and rejected the foreign substance and soon he was coughing wildly into the night's cool air. His dark hair matted to his forehead. It was still dark in the early morning with the clouds hiding the moonlight.

Shivering from his wet clothes, his arms stretched out in front of him groping for a ladder or low laying edge.

His black suit clung to his athletic form as he found gripping and began to pull his length from the depths of the empty pool.

He collapsed gratefully onto the concrete ledge at the top; rolling back and forth, holding a cramp in his side.

The world slowly fell into focus around him. Blues and blacks of the night became less and harsh.

Definitive objects begin to emerge all around the backyard.

When he steadied his breathing, he stood up carefully, his legs feeling distrustful of the ground below them.

At first his steps were slow and cautious but as the fence for the yard appeared from the shadows, Ross returned to his naturally long stride.

He reached the fence with relative ease and proceeded to jump over it, using his left arm to balance his weight.

His long feet landed into the green wet grass with a "plunk" sound that reminded him of playing football with Monica when they were kids.

With that memories began to invade his mind. The pain of Rachel's silence rang back into his cranium and imploded with pain.

He stopped for two minutes, rubbing his forehead, trying to breathe slowly.

In his heart, he knew he didn't believe it.

He had moved past the clouded insecurity and paranoia of youth, to trust his wife with all his heart.

The concept of Rachel and infidelity in itself was a contradiction.

Yet, their silence was what played repetitiously through his mind.

The way they didn't say no

'Shit, you've got to talk to her." A confused voice from somewhere deep inside said resolutely.

He proceeded past an ancient knobbed tree with ominous branches towering overhead.

As intimidating as it seemed, it actually comforted Ross Gellar; a man of stability and strength.

There's something to be said of trees.

His shoes glided across the tips of grass and dirt.

Slipping periodically.

Eventually he arrived at the white concrete slab giving way to a backyard door. The yellow light still on and beaming was nothing short of manifest destiny for him.

Slowly he reached for his keys to see if they were still in his pockets.

His hands nervously searched until the edges of his fingers stroked the small crafted metal within.

Approaching the door, he slid the key into its intended lock.

He opened the wooden and glass door carefully not to make much noise.

Once inside the spacious kitchen he turned on all the lights and went to wash his face clear of all the mud and dirty pool water.

Splashing his hair and face, fragments of dirt began to slide off, revealing the soft tan skin underneath, with years of experience.

He grabbed a small clear glass from the nearby cabinet and poured a cup of water. Before the rim of the glass touched his lips, he felt a pair of arms tear into his waist.

A soft laughter escaped Ross' mouth and for the first time in days he realized just how much he needed that.

He turned around slowly and leveled eye contact with his thirteen year old attacker.

Ross stared into the young boy's deep brown eyes, tuff of thick blonde hair, and gleefully goofy expression.

Ben.

Carol's soft feminine frame emerged in the kitchen doorway, draped in a blue robe and curiosity. Still fighting off sleep.

Immediately upon seeing her ex-husband, she wasn't shocked or upset.Simply aware something must be wrong.

Everyone who knew Ross Gellar, knew he was a man of sensibility; filled with purpose and plans.

Somehow him being in her house in the early hours of the morning said without words that something must be going terribly awry with his life.

In a sweeping motion, she crossed her linoleum floor and rested a hand on Ross' shoulder.

"Hey, what's going on?" concern laced every word cautiously.

He smiled a soft smile in her direction, with one arm wrapped around his growing son:

"Do you have a minute?" he said in a voice more husky than usual.

"Ross." She said arching an eyebrow and tilting her head with familiar affection. Her medium length blonde hair fell across her face gently while she replied with hushed understanding;

"Hours. For you Ross. I've always got hours."

**  
**

**A few hours later...**

**Waiting.**

Just waiting.

How many times had she done this for him impatiently?

It was always an obligation, the burdened responsibility of a less accomplished child to an over-praised sibling.

She loved her brother, and it was always her nature to focus on others anyway.

Yet, somehow sibling jealously and competition always crept in.

But now it was different.

There was a deeper understanding between Monica and Ross.

Waiting.

How many times in life had she done this patiently?

Even through all her pain, Monica felt that somehow being there for her brother right now made her pain less.

The blur of violent traffic lights were somehow less. The length of the drive was somehow less. The importance of Chandler and Rachel was…well, that would take sometime to become….less.

The road melted away before her silver Porsche as it snaked through the northern landscape.

The concrete and metal blend was giving into the natural grass and dirt.

The sky's grim city tint was becoming sharper even in the morning light.

The gears of the automobile shifted and grinded effortlessly below her small frame. She eased herself along tight bends and curves, clutching a Starbucks espresso dripping into her cup holder.

Silence was interrupted only by the engine's fast revolutions.

The landscape peeled its way across her windows.

The high rises and penthouses soon gave way to fields and then long pine trees. Their deep greens stretching out aggressively into the thin two lane road.

When she arrived at Carol and Susan's Ithaca residence it took five minutes for her thirteen year old nephew to come bounding towards her car.

'He's getting big' she thought slowly. While watching his face contour in an obvious expression of excitement.

That emotion doesn't suit 7a.m. Monica thought dryly as she glanced down at the clock before exciting the car to hug Ben.

"Hey, Ben," she said warmly, smiling down at his handsome features.

"Hey Aunt Mon. What's up with Dad? He and mom have been talking in the living room for hours."

"Changes Ben. Changes," she replied staring off towards the curtained windows.

She glanced down the street at all the fresh lawns shimmering from morning dew and street lamps which would soon be off.

She breathed in heavily the muted air.

Her blues eyes sharply shot towards her nephew though they were distant and tired;

"Do you like waiting? I think it's something adults take a long time to master, especially in situations that can change lives, but I think it's important."

With that Ben shrugged his shoulders casually, and followed his aunt as she lowered herself back into her car and sat there silently.

He entered the passenger's side, just waiting beside her for minutes, simply staring towards the house in patient expectation.

"My dad says coffee is unhealthy, especially when you're depressed." Ben said nonchalantly, his gaze never leaving the house.

Monica's eyes stayed just as steady while taking another sip from her cup.

"Your dad says a lot of things Ben."

"So which is true, the unhealthy coffee or your depression? You haven't looked happy in months"

Monica sighed deeply; Ben had his father's scrutiny. A million thoughts were flying through her mind other than this conversation.

"Which is true? Huh. School is true Ben. When does it start today for you?"

"School is for conformists," he replied dryly with a frown etched across his youthful face.

He resembled Ross so strongly when he frowned.

With this Monica's attention shifted into the car. With an eyebrow arched, she gave Ben an amused look.

"I understand more than you know….just never, ever tell your father that, and stay away from weed."

"Why?" Ben said, playfully testing her.

"Because it sounds like something an adult should say to a kid who hates school, now shh…silence with waiting is good."

More minutes change the numbers on the automobile's clock. Mechanics forcing the propulsion of time, when most would rather it stop for a while, providing just enough time for us to catch up.

"When I grow up I think I'll be depressed too. It suits you. All great men are it seems….Nietzsche, Lovecraft…" Ben mused slowly.

Monica sputtered on her coffee slightly and stared at Ben as just if she just realized what he was saying.

"One. Are you really are fascinated by depression or is this some suburban attempt to make your life more fascinating? Two. What the hell does a thirteen year old know about Nietzsche or Lovecraft? Third. Those two were men with great words and concepts, but they were not great men. Forth. I'm not depressed….I'm just….pleasantly dark for the moment…and fifth. Shhh!"

Ben folded his arms and eventually fell into the contentment of silence.

Monica breathed in slowly and just as her hands were reaching towards her espresso again a figure in a black suit emerged from the house's doorway.

She smiled at her brother's dark features while Carol and Susan gave their hugs goodbye to Ross.

Ben quickly jumped out of the car and gave his father a masculine pat on the back before Ross pulled him into a quick hug.

Ben ran back and gave Monica a hug while Carol and Susan waved simultaneous hellos and goodbyes from the front door.

Ross wasn't at all surprised to find Monica in the driveway. His ex-wife in the past few years had become the equivalent of an economical investment in therapy.

When he was fighting with Rachel, when he wasn't, she was there.

There was always a deep love and respect between the two. Whenever Ross felt his old tendencies toward anxiety and jealously creeping up, Carol always had the ability to make his seriousness laughable and less cumbersome.

Even her girlfriend Susan had become a reasonable friend, though at times when it came to Ben, there would be tension as far as dominance.

Monica stepped out of her car once more and stretched her legs as her brother walked across the damp yard. His shoes and the cuffs of his pants were collecting bits of moisture and grass. He had taken his suit coat off and he stood above her with his crinkled dress shirt and loose tie.

She strongly resisted the urge to iron out a crease or two with her hands. It all seemed so trivial.

"Hey…" he said warmly with traces of exhaustion.

"Hi," Monica said carefully while wrapping her small arms around him.

Seconds later the hum of her engine announced their departure from Ithaca suburbia. The hours passed as they steadily approached the city, with silent and distant observation.

As they neared Manhattan it became obvious to both of them that they weren't sure where they were going.

What was home anymore?

Monica tilted her head towards him after she pulled into a semi-crowded parking lot west of the park.

"Where to?"

Ross' subtle eyes scanned the cars and people around them leisurely before his lips cracked open.

Running a hand through the black hair matted on his forehead he said reluctantly, "Home, I should see her."

Water stung behind Monica's clear blue eyes, "oh."

The one companion who understood exactly what she was feeling was considering forgiveness before she could even swallow the concept. He was running back to _her._

A strange mixture of jealousy and abandonment ran down her throat as her eyes fiercely examined the light reflecting off the hood of her car.

A voice within her tried to speak rationality into her veins but the pain crept in like sharp ice all the same.

He had Emma to consider after all.

"Monica—"

"—Yes," she said harshly, still evading his brown eyes.

"Stay with Charlie for the night…I'll come by later today to see you."

Monica heaved in a sigh, her brother was right, she shouldn't be alone and Charlie was neutral. He wasn't abandoning her. Like everyone else.

He stroked his rough hand through her dark hair. She let a smile pass across her face quickly and he smiled slightly in return.

"Are you okay?" he asked endearingly.

Monica's eyes went wide slowly as she tried to find the words. The longer she mused over his question, the more ridiculous it seemed.

Before she could stop herself, the sound of unfiltered laughter escaped her lips.

Her emotions over the last few days poured out of her in a mass of hysterical laugher until her brother began to laugh along as well.

Pure laughter reverberated through the car's interior for what seemed like hours. Finally she leaned her beautiful face back and whispered into the air:

"Of course not. None of us are."

As they sat in the car, a world apart from the objects around them, they knew they sat on the knife's edge of a revolution within their lives. It was stirring beneath their feet and their souls, ready to devour or rebirth them.

He would return home. She would wait for a new home to materialize.

And neither of them knew how difficult it would be to reach either destination.

In a city where nothing is promised, where homes are housed in the instability of rent, it's easy for it to fall away in crumbles before we even realize it.

But life inevitably has complications; it is the revolutions inside ourselves that determine what we become.

Ross thought slowly as Monica shifted the Porsche into gear again, the belts and motor turning and changing, most things were going to change.

After hours of talking, he had accepted the changes that were going to have to happen in his life.

Including the hardest decision he would ever have to make...saying goodbye.

Most revolutions require sacrafice.


	25. A Declaration of Tomorrow

**_The Final Chapters_**

**_ Thank you guys. Just Two Chapters left. This one's a short set up. It's simple literature because my goal was to progress these characters without complications now that we're towards the end. For these scenes, it just felt as if simpliciy was the most effective. Enjoy.  
_**

_**A DECLARATION OF TOMORROW **_

**Friday**

**10:00 a.m. **

**The Husband and Wife **

Two figures were purposefully intertwined in the rising morning light, enclosed by high thread golden sheets, still aglow from the calisthenics of last night.

The beautiful light green olive paint gave the room a Mediterranean feel with its rich wooden décor.

Mike whispered his good mornings into his wife's small ears and held her close. This was the best part of fights after all; basking in the promises of the future.

Phoebe turned to face him, naked under the covers, "I'm sorry."

Mike nodded "I am too. Give them time. They know how much you love them."

Minutes ticked by quickly in the morning haze.

The events of last night were running through her mind with flashes of expressions and tempers from her friends.

'Her friends' …maybe that was presumptuous.

Mike's voice ran into her thoughts.

He was rambling off topics of the day suggesting the country house for the weekend. Something's going on politically that his father won't clarify…but there have been high official advisory warnings about the city lately….

She hadn't had much time for the news. .

Phoebe stopped his weekend briefing with a swift motion.

She moved her head closer and pressed her lips softly against his. It was much less than a kiss.

But it was enough.

Mike pulled his head away from hers and took in her face with his wide eyes.

Hers were full of emotion; some uncomfortable combination of expectation and dread.

"Pheebs," Mike said cautiously.

She didn't waste anytime in response though her mouth was still dry form sleep.

"Show me. Show me where you saw them? I…I've got a plan" she exhaled as tears trickled from her eyelashes, "I've got to make this right. Please…"

Mike's face looked upwards to the ceiling in doubt, watching the fan circle above them, spaces of white flashing through.

"Mike," Phoebe whispered again, as she sat up and cupped his face with her narrow fingers, "Please. I need to do this…tonight."

**The Wild Card**

Wrapped in sleep when Ross and Monica arrived, Joey and Charlie groggily tumbled from her sofa and to the front door.

After a brief conversation at the door Charlie exclaimed, "Of course she can stay."

Monica's eyes meet Joey's awkward stare as he kissed Charlie goodbye and left the loft.

He left without words, without expression.

After a few minutes, Ross headed home after saying all he had to offer. He kissed his sister and hugged Charlie. Then he dragged his feet out of the door with fragments of leaves still clinging to his suit.

Eventually, Monica was begrudging left in the company of her emotions again; stuck between two voided buildings labeled hate and sadness, shadowing her on both sides.

Charlie took her hand and guided her to the guest bedroom.

It was simple décor with tastefully understated expenses.

The room had a beautiful yellow southern ambiance with gorgeous white satin hanging over the top of the windows.

They crossed the wide hardwood floor.

The bright light of room was filling Monica's pale and sunken expression. Her eyes were worlds away, searching inside herself.

As Charlie opened a drawer to grab fresh linens beside the guest bed, she noticed Monica's body become rigid beside her.

Charlie followed Monica's eyes and gasped. 'Oh God,' she thought as dread poured into her veins.

She quickly shut the drawer after grabbing a roll of white sheets.

But it was too late.

Silence filled the room as Monica's darkly circled eyes glanced awkwardly down to the wooden floor.

Charlie quickly explained off handedly, "It's my father's. I'm sort of holding right now, until his alcoholism gets better. The neighbors were complaining about…threats, there was a mailman incident."

Monica's head nodded an 'oh.'

Yet Charlie's eyes never left Monica. She gazed down at her in worry.

More silence poured into the air.

"I know what you're thinking," whispered Monica. "…But I would never do…what you're thinking. You can take it with you if you like."

Charlie choked on the awkwardness of the moment, "No. I wasn't… thinking anything. I just wanted to tell you I'll check on you for lunch."

She very quickly shuffled out of the room leaving the linen in Monica's small hands.

Monica's attention shifted back towards the small dresser.

She closed her eyes and tried to distract her thoughts out the window with the view of New York's morning.

Yet there it was, placed neatly in the drawer beside the bed; a neatly molded metal object with infinite possibilities.

**The idealist**

A Mexican hotel.

A beautiful Latina, the affair of Friday nights, in human flesh.

She was naked and glowing on the bed.

He had never met this woman a day in his life. But he knew he desperately loved her. He went to grasp for her and her skin crumbled at the touch of his fingertips.

Falling into the wind without direction.

Chandler was dreaming.

He reached for the strips of skin and ran towards the open floor-to-ceiling hole in the wall. The beautiful ancient stucco crumbling to the olive green tiled floors.

A gorgeous tall teal fountain sparkled from another corner in the room. White spray landing at his feet.

He glanced towards the ceiling above him and in an instant it was gone. All the stars shone above him as they never could in New York. And he knew each one belonged to him.

The sky was like milk.

Thick and pouring into the earth and stone around him.

It was a deep red with white clouds swirling like cream.

He heard guns exploding in the background with tanks rumbling the architecture around him, coming from the rich green and yellow hills in the distance.

Black and grey smoke covering the milky sky.

But, she was gone. He looked behind him onto a wide silver ironed bed. There, wrapped in its' blankets was a fragile baby, reaching up to him calmly. It was his. He saw the clear blue eyes, like some distant Georgia sky.

Chandler looked back towards the hole, hoping to see the reincarnated Latina woman climbing above the ruble and green vines poking through.

But she was gone….

And the word was closing in.

Chandler woke up in Joey's apartment with terror filling his heart. Clouding it like the smoke in the sky of his dreams. He saw clearly now that this dream was a declaration of tomorrow and all the days to follow.

His once clear line was becoming vague now. He thought it was just about the child but it's obvious something inside him was terrified of losing her.

Her and everything about Friday nights.

It was all that kept him from suicide the recent months.

He rubbed his burning eyes and immediately reached towards the small Motorola cell phone on the carpeted floor.

Technology prevailed and the phone began to ring steadily.

Then there was a soft voice somewhere through the frequencies. A tired "hello?"

"Hi."

There was no response through the crystal clear connection.

"He's there isn't he? Okay, you don't have to speak. Just listen. I know I shouldn't be calling, especially after…well everything. But I had to check on you and the baby…. Please Rachel just cough, say something if the baby is okay…RACHEL!"

"Emma's fine," a weak voice replied slowly into the line.

Chandler face broke with a hysterical smile. "So the baby's fine? The doctor said its fine"

"Yes," Rachel replied calmly. Chandler could tell she was smiling while trying not to.

"Rachel…."

"Uh huh"

"I…uh…I think we should meet at our spot tonight. I want to see you, the baby. I need to," his voice was strained with desperation.

"No."

"Rachel, you can think of it as the last time, just, please?...please."

**The Knight**

There were days when her songs were for him, Ross thought casually. Whispered into existence, were romantic lyrics recounting their passions.

Her voice wasn't much…ordinary and strained. But it was beautiful and it was the way voices should sound for the rest of his life. She liked the Red Hot Chilli Peppers lately.

He sat on the couch hearing her stirring directly behind him in their cold kitchen.

She was no longer singing or humming the current radio trends like she used to.

There was nothing but silence.

She had run to the door and hugged him when he returned, with tears in her eyes.

Tears were in his.

His mind tried but his body couldn't respond.

All the questions and the wanted answers swirled around in his mind.

He was still trying to say something, do anything, but he couldn't move.

Ross remained motionless, staring into space.

Then the phone rang and she answered it breathlessly.

Ross watched her eyes meet his heavily until she pulled them away.

By the time she hung up the phone the last thing she had said was, "yes."

--------------------------------

**Hey guys, the next chapter is the big one. So it may be a week or so before it comes. But this is something I'm passionate about. So it will come in good time. As always thank you guys for following. This has been therapy. Review boldy or mildly, it's always a pleasure. I'll be back with more soon.**


	26. Finale I

**A Dance with New York: **

**This is the first half of the finale. **

**It's being crafted very carefully. **

**The second and final half should be out within the week. **

**Thank you, sincerely.  
**

**-float **

* * *

**The Finale, Back to Friday**

"Most people live their lives as if they hold some private understanding"

**September 11th, 2001**

Danny McConner and Thomas Delmarco were falling down countless steps under the weight of their uniforms and oxygen devices. They had long lost their perception of distance and speed as their feet stumbled down the stairwell, grasping for any flat surface. Their hearts were racing as the two fire fighters maneuvered pass dead bodies in the path of those that had succumbed to smoke inhalation.

6th floor of the second tower.

Nearly an hour and 15 minutes before they were here, the first shadow of a commercial airliner darkened the streets and buildings of Manhattan at 8:46 a.m.

There was no question that their units would be entering the towers to aid evacuation as fire raged above them and bodies jumped to their deaths below.

They had entered the first tower at 9:15 a.m when their chief called out, "Delmarco, McConner, Parker, and Ellis, TOWER 2, NOW!"

As they trucked through the smoke and debris, between the two towers, they knew they were somewhere in between the vast lots of life and death.

A deep shade of gray darkened their faces as they passed underneath the weakening scaffolds, sheets of falling paper, and plummeting bodies.

**New York City: _5 years later_**

* * *

**A product of industry**

Monica stared into the clouded evening, somewhere in between life and death herself.

She too, is the beautiful progeny of New York City. Conceived in the security of the American dream, she was resurrected like steel and iron in the industrial age.

Monica walked down the street, her raven hair swaying behind her and small specks of gravel shifting under her dark sandals.

The buildings of New York were on both sides and her future in front of her.

As much as she was created by her surroundings, she was also shattered by the instability of American promise.

Prosperity.

Security.

Freedom.

She was wiser now. She mourned the death of her suburbs. Her sadness was smoldering underneath her eyes like the fires of 19th century New York.

Yet here she stood, walking bravely into the unknown.

Attempting to resurrect herself from death and alcoholism like steel lifted from the dust and debris of September 11th.

Trying not to think about the social terrorists who had shattered her dreams, security, and friendships.

Bottled water was held tightly in her hand, with the wind streaking her hair across her face in sharp lines.

A thousand lights were vibrating around her with the soft steady hum of electricity and motors.

The definite outlines of buildings were giving way to the black sky coming from the east. The city was dancing furiously through its joys and tragedies.

Her brother walked on the broad grey sidewalk just a few feet ahead of her. Phoebe and Mike led the way in front of him.

It was strewn with papers and small trash, speckles of chewed gum sprinkled the path here and there.

Cars of mass production flew by the corners of their eyes on their left, other pedestrian passerby's to their right.

New York's skyline danced elusively among the broken twilight …

But she wasn't dancing.

Not even close.

Her walk was one of more experience; weary and reluctant.

She felt much more like she was walking to the gallows, with something scratching her neck.

Her mind went back to when Phoebe, Mike, and Ross had arrived at Charlie's apartment half an hour ago looking for her.

Monica opened the door as a chime rang through the loft. She was relaxed with a high pony tail and sweat pants. Charlie was preoccupied in the kitchen, steaming out her fresh broccoli.

The white lights from the hallway beamed into the spacious loft.

Ross glanced down at her from the doorway with his puppy dog eyes. He was now in a simple NYU black t-shirt and a light black jacket. His denim jeans were faded and folded neatly over his black Nike classics. Phoebe and Mike stood hesitantly behind him.

Her keen eyes glared towards Phoebe and noticed her remarkably simple attire; khaki slacks and a fitted white knit t-shirt. Her blonde hair was still cascading down her shoulders.

Eventually her skeptical stare came back to Ross.

"Phoebe has something to show us," said Ross gently.

Monica's eyes shot 'bullshit' at her brother before her mouth found the words.

"She feels she can clarify what Friday night's are, once and for all," he explained wearily.

"I'm sure she can." Monica said dryly as she frowned angrily at her bohemian friend, "But I don't give a shit."

"Mon—"Ross began before Phoebe stepped up beside him. Her olive eyes were watery but her tone was clear.

"Monica, I can't imagine….okay, I can't, and I know that, and I'm sorry that everything happened the way it did. I had no right to say what I said. Especially now cause—"

"Cause what!" Monica spat impatiently, raising her hands.

"Because, what I thought I knew, I'm not sure I know anymore… Mike and I have been thinking and I, I think we understand what's been going on…you just have to see it, so please?" Phoebe said as she arched her eyebrows desperately.

Monica stared at Mike and then past him somewhere in the distant corridor.

"Please…" said Ross. With her brother's pleading voice striking her, she directed her gaze back towards Ross in astonishment.

"Why? Ross, why do you want to see it? This hasn't been fucked up enough?"

He didn't blink with hesitation; he had thought this through.

"I need to…I can't live not knowing what this is. I need to see….you know….I need to."

"Oh, okay, I see, can I talk to you for a minute inside," Monica said with a hint of ridicule, pulling her brother inside and shutting the door in Phoebe's face. The hall resonated with the sound.

* * *

**September 11th, 2001**

Danny McConner slipped on a collapsed pile of brick in the second tower's spacious lobby. His oxygen tank resounded loudly on the concrete flooring. Papers, brick, and smoke were scattered everywhere. It seemed like the end of the world. Thomas Delmarco grabbed McConner's elbow and pulled him back up.

Delmarco's steady grey eyes pierced McConner's terrified brown stare. He pulled them away from the other firefighters and held his best friend steadily with two hands placed on his uniformed shoulders. They stood still shadowed by a restroom corridor.

"Hey…look at me…this is nothing…okay, we'll get some people out of here and then go get drinks….okay," Thomas shook Danny's shoulders. His strong New York accent sounded off their masks.

"Yea….yeah," Danny said hesitantly shaking with fear as the building shifted around them with screams and groans.

Tons of metal and brick shook above their heads, a weight that would obliterate them.

"Danny boy, Look at me, what's that restaurant you like so much?" Danny's eyes met his friends again a little more calm this time.

"Uh, it's that Latin one a few blocks from here."

"Then that's where we'll go. Okay? So we'll make it through this and you can buy me a bud."

Danny McConner looked down at the small debris below his feet as more screaming corporate workers flew by them covered in soot and burns.

"We don't have to do this…we can just go now, nobody we'll blame us…we'll never make it to those stuck in the higher levels," Danny McConner whispered.

Thomas scanned Danny's expression and then breathed in deeply.

They had grown up together in streets of Brooklyn. Their fathers and father's fathers were firemen and police. They were each other's godparents. Their daughters were christened together. Their sons played baseball in the same park every Saturday. Their wives shared cooking advice for their church's monthly bake sales. Now Danny McConner was certain they were going to die together.

"This is bad Danny. I know. But you know me…and I can't walk away from this..., I can't" He glanced at the Apple advertisement behind them and then back towards McConner, "I love you, get out of here."

"You're doing this with or without me huh!" Danny yelled.

Thomas Delmarco signaled Ellis and Parker to start moving up the staircase with their tanks, past the continuous mass exodus. As he stepped up the first step into the dark stairwell he felt a strong glove on his shoulders.

Danny walked passed Delmarco into the stairwell with an agitated gruff: "Okay, come on…it's too early for the I love you's anyway."

* * *

**A Product of Industry**

Monica stared at her brother with immense frustration.

"I know how badly you want them to be innocent, but obviously, you've forgotten last night."

"No," He uttered almost inaudibly, "I remember."

"Oh, so you were there when your wife and brother-in-law didn't deny sleeping together,"

"Monica, I know, I KNOW," Ross exasperated with his face becoming red and his eyes glossing over,

"I was there just like you! But those two people in there, in that dining room, I didn't know them. I can't even imagine the scenario of an affair. She wouldn't. Because this was IT….she's it, I can't go through losing her again…I can't, I can't let her go!" Ross said as his voice cracked.

"It's not just the slightest bit odd to you that they're together tonight _again_ after everything?" Monica asked.

"Maybe their just afraid..." he said gazing at the wall boyishly.

He wasn't just hurt at what they may have or may have not done. He was terrified, and she was too. Monica just always held her fear better than her older sibling.

"You're going to go with or without me aren't you," she said a little nervously.

Ross looked up, pushing his dark hair upwards, "I need too,"

With that she left the foyer and went towards the guest bedroom.

"Give me five minutes."

* * *

**September 11th, 2001**

At 10:01 a.m. the stairwells of the second tower were mass chaos confined. The emergency lights were flickering on and off before dying with a loud snap. Screams erupted down the vertical metal cavern. Over 400 hundred people were trapped. Bodies were cluttering of stairs, contoured in odd shapes and directions.

The particles of severe dust and the smell of electrical fires and fax paper suffocated countless lungs.

Flashlights of surviving fire men cut through the dense air light like death's beacons. Small yellow circles of light were captured by the blinding smoke. They knew they were in this smothering stairwell somewhere in between life and death.

A loud clamor of metal weighing tons resounded with a metal clang as the first tower began to fall. A wave of concrete and men tumbled in a rush of ash and dust into the streets below. Time was a blurred concept.

The two firemen felt the ground shaking fiercely below them. Something above them was shifting and the screams from the floors above were increasing.

5th Floor.

Ellis and Parker were lost somewhere in the dense smoke above. Delmarco grabbed Danny and they started leaping back down the stairwell.

All their years of experience provided this gut intuition that the only thing they could do now was run.

They felt their muscles tearing and skin bruising as they slammed into walls at every turn; falling and running with feet they could barely control.

Only God knows the lifeless forms they were stumbling over. The crowd of people was less now that most had run for the windows, crouched under desks, or passed out form smoke inhalation.

At the 3rd floor a man with a white shirt caked in blood broke into the stairwell, standing in front of them heaving for air. Delmarco reached for the man and asked why he hadn't evacuated.

His brown eyes rolled white and the collapsed in front of them with his head banging into the stairwell railing.

* * *

**A Product of Industry**

Now all of Manhattan was spread before the friends as they followed Mike to the Latin club a subway ride and a few blocks away.

Monica's plain white knee length cotton skirt and black tank top that she borrowed from Charlie's lengthy wardrobe reflected little of the white lights and yellow lamps that resonated with brilliance; and the scattered clouds that blanketed her with a sense of forewarning.

Her cell phone buzzed in her bag on her shoulder. The blue Treo screen flashed a name she hadn't seen in years. Her heart began to beat a little faster as she wondered what he could possibly want. They had said their goodbyes so long ago.

Her narrow finger pressed the small red button to the right and the screen went dark.

She looked up towards the sky and realized it was only a matter of time before the fires of the Village, Manhattan, Soho, and the Bronx set off the sky and forced it to explode with water and quell the hell dancing all around her.

* * *

**The Death of Eros**

Chandler arrived at the front of the Latin club's entrance as if he was cast in some romantic Gone with the Wind-esque cinematic endeavor.

His calm exterior walked down the city streets; yellow and orange lamps shimmering off his sharp face.

Anticipation raised the hairs on his neck, as he strode past the doorman with tired eyes at the red glass doors.

"Hey Tommy," he said in a scratched voice.

Tommy opened them with routine indifference, as if he was somewhere thousands of miles away.

Chandler stood on the platform and searched the crowd expectedly with his faded cobalt eyes. His formal polo shirt hugged his medium build as his slacks fell down his tennis player legs. His face tightened slightly in anticipation because of the energy pulsating from the dance floor. The more his eyes failed to spot her, the more constricted his chest became.

His handsome narrow features were squinting through the dark. Walking past a beautiful woman at a table to the right sitting alone, his legs carried him towards the dance floor.

Sometimes we need to dance.

He understood.

And fate did too.

Someday later he'll realize why she was dancing, and how it had nothing to do with him; just like this city.

And he was going to dance too. Just so tonight he could forget the existence of his sins.

* * *

**September 11th, 2001 **

Danny stared down at the dead man in shock and wondered if there was such a thing a sin. He couldn't help but wonder aimlessly where the older man was now.

"Seconds ago he was here, where did he go?"

Delmarco went through the room the man had stumbled from and followed a sound like an animalistic cry. Underneath a desk, beside four Apple computers sparking an electrical fire with white smoke was a young Chinese woman in a grey suit.

Streams of her pale skin under her eyes were all that was visible in the black dust.

Her leg was stuck under a ceiling beam that had fallen from the wall beside her.

He gave her his mask before running back out to the hallway.

He grabbed Danny because he knew he wouldn't understand any other way. He threw him into a wall as his best friend cried with a line of tears cutting through the grime.

"Go, Danny, the children… understand…I'll see you, GO"

Thomas pushed him downward and then turned back towards the crying woman to try to pry her leg from the metal beam.

Danny didn't go so much as he was propelled down the stairs. But he didn't stop. His chest was heaving from trauma and exhaustion. Sweat piercing his eyes and blinding him as he ran out of the lobby's side exit, underneath a glass canopy as another body landed with a thump above him. As he smashed through the last glass door, the unimaginable sound of tons of metal and shrapnel were screeching, breaking, and then falling in a deafening roar.

He dived into the nearest abandoned building, unhinging a door and landing on the floor, sliding underneath a metal counter. Then he closed his eyes and felt the world collapsing on top of him.

6 hours later, they dug Danny McConner out alive. He had to leave his suit deep in the rubble just to fit out of his impending grave. They asked his name as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

He whispered, "Thomas Delmarco"

He was the last man out alive from the second tower.

* * *

**The Death of Eros**

'There were heroes and there were superheroes,' thought Chandler retrospectively. He had tried heroism; he did sincerely. But ultimately Chandler had more in common with villains, with terrorists, with Judas Iscariots. His greatest motivations in life were derived from his own ambitions. He was Eve's son.

He was selfish.

Was the baby for Monica? Or for his redemption among his friends?

His actions struck each of his friends with the randomness of a terrorist cell and improvisation of a commercial plane turned into a missile.

And now he was ready to let these relationships burn in billowing smoke.

Nobody would ever forgive him. Monica hated him. Almost everyone probably did. Everyone but her….

His eyes focused on Rachel moving in front of him slowly.

Maybe she would be his heaven, his reward.

His hand slid across her stomach. He imagined the baby resting underneath his arm.

If he had done anything right, perhaps it would be this.

He smiled to himself as he breathed in her vanilla perfume, rubbing the life growing inside of her.

Dancing.

Shedding.

And Embracing.

Chandler felt Rachel fall back into his chest as they swayed back and forth.

He didn't understand it. She was upset with him; with the situation in which they had placed themselves.

But she let him touch her now. She let his rhythm match hers. For five minutes in time, this dance was theirs, and their sole existence rested on it. Yet the music always fades eventually…

He felt her body tense as she turned and buried her face into his blue shirt.

She wouldn't look him in the eyes when he gently tried to nudge her chin up with his fingers. That's when he felt his body shutting down rapidly. His muscles were becoming stone in a matter of seconds while his brain spun around the moment. His intelligence and intuition told him very quickly that this was sabotage.

Somehow he knew, that she had come to say goodbye in ways more final then he had ever expected.

She turned her head sideways while still leaning into his body, and looked into the world of the Latin restaurant that had slowly fallen back into place around her. She took in a desperate breath and inhaled the cologne, soft and resembling nearly twelve years of familiarity.

Lights and people were blurred as tears swelled in her eyes. While the shadows and echoes of a world far away surrounded her, Rachel fell deeply into her mind.

Simply wondering how to tell the man who had danced behind her for so many years that his world was about to change…

"Chandler," she whispered into his chest.

"No." he replied resolutely into her hair.

"Chan—"

"—NO. Don't say it. Just dance with me for a while."

"No. Chandler. I can't, I can't do this anymore," she said as she stepped away from him.

He reached for her hand but she kept her arms by her sides.

"Chandler you don't love me. We both know that….this isn't love….this was an escape, and we danced, and I will never forget how close we've become…but now people are hurting…and with all the secrets…we need to go back to our lives," she said clearly through the new slow song picking up. It had a slow deep bass.

"Don't tell me what I feel," he muttered dejectedly to the floor.

"Chandler?" she asked pleading with her blue eyes.

"DON'T TELL ME WHAT I FEEL!" He yelled in her face. Rachel's complexion turned red as the tears began to stream. Her hair was falling down her shoulders. The smoke was circling around them from the club's atmosphere.

A few eyes now stared curiously their way.

Rays of red light were trapped in the air, while others danced around them slowly.

"Chandler, I love Ross." Rachel exclaimed heatedly.

"And you don't love me," his eyes pierced through hers.

Rachel eased her hands up to his face and exhaled heavily.

"No. I'm sorry."

"It's that simple for you, huh?"

"Yes. I'm in love with Ross. I always have been."

Chandler sighed and dragged his hand through his sandy brown hair.

"Fine, I don't know what I expected," Chandler said looking into the crowded distance.

"Chan, I love you. Just not in the way you need—"

"I said fine." He tore his self away from her and began to walk off of the hardwood floor.

"Chandler..." she sputtered out looking down into her hands. Tears, now, were pouring somewhere deeper.

"What? What do you want from me? Why'd you even come here?" His eyes glazed over with a dramatic look of confusion.

She took in a deep breath. How do you articulate the words that will irrevocably change your best friend's life forever?

You dance into it, on a Friday night in Manhattan, and you pray the dance somehow makes it less heavy, less cumbersome…


	27. Finale II

**The finale ended up in III parts. It was unintentional, but as the story progressed it was neccessary. Thank you guys for the wait, it was delayed because this is a arduous task. And one that had to be perfect.**

**It's a little lengthier than I intended but when I went back to cut material, there was absolutely nothing I wanted to lose. **

**So read this when you have the time; and because of the delay between finale I and the following two, for those who need the refresher I may suggest rereading finale I. **

** Sincerely, I hope you guys enjoy. **

**Alas, the end.**

**I'm so sad to see this story wrap up. **

**But it has been an absolute pleasure. **

**-float**

**side notes: Will is Brad Pitt's character from the Thanksgiving episode.  
**

* * *

**Finale II **

On occasion, beneath the lucid light of yellow electricity, the rain soaked fragments of gravel shine from the black streets and illuminate man's creation like diamonds.

Billions of black diamonds saturate roadways and sidewalks; from Broadway to 72nd street.

Headlights and streetlamps dance through the glowing night; a shimmering compromise of nature and machine.

It's more than rain.

It's more than electricity.

It's more than gravel.

It's synergy.

A distinctively attractive man dashed from a yellow cab door right as the sky broke open over New York City, drenching his grey shirt and denim. Trails of rain wound themselves down the thread of his cotton shirt. They were like miniature rivers soaking into his warm skin. The dampness darkened the shirt's tint. The smells from the leather cab seat he had sat on during the ride from J.F.K began to fade into the air.

He shifted through the Euros in his deep front pocket hurriedly until he found a creased American ten dollar bill.

With his steel indigo eyes narrowed in anticipation, he ran up to the crimson glass door of a small Latin night club. Drops of lukewarm water steadily tricked down from his dark blonde hair. Beadings were streaming down his exposed neck.

Before he could reach the intricately designed door handles, a man to the right rested a strong arm on his shoulder. "Hey, I'm sorry I can't let you in like that sir."

For the first time the young man broke the concentration he had held since he left Berlin last night.

"What?" he said instinctively, traces of German stained his English now like a napkin under a cappuccino glass.

The young doorman, of his late 20s, looked tiredly at the man before him. Everybody's got their own personal emergencies in New York City. His rugged brown eyes attempted to discern what was so important on the other side of those doors for this stranger. The doorman hesitated as something much older flickered behind his rich chocolate eyes, decades older than his age.

"Please? I've just…I've come so far." the wet man pleaded before him, with a desperate face that resembled what he must have looked like in younger years.

"I said I couldn't let you go in like _that_….wait a minute…Ryan," he called around the corner of the building, "Ry…take the door for five minutes. "

A dark charming man with sharp features came up with a bright smile and nodded his head, "Sure, Tom."

Soon they approached a side doorway underneath a small circular shaft of yellow light. Tom turned the grimy metallic door knob with a silver employees' key.

The steely eyed man looked down at his Motorola, scrolling down to the M's to dial her number again. Busy tone again.

The heavy door swung open dramatically with the shift of a lock.

A single bulb hung from the ceiling of a simple room stacked full of boxes of alcohol and catering supplies. The floor's dust collected the residue from their wet shoes.

The room smelled of wet cardboard and cleaning fluids. It resembled a mobster's illegal activity room in some shop in the heart of Little Italy.

Shadows deepened in corners and under shelves.

A twinge of uneasiness came over the stranger's eyes.

"Here," said Tom thrusting a towel towards him. "We're not that uptight about the dress code. You just can't look so disgruntled. When you dry up you can go straight through those two doors over there, down the hallway, and you'll be behind the bar."

Tom smiled goodbye and then went back towards the door they had entered from. Suddenly the steely eyed man spoke up.

"Thanks…I don't know when New York got nice, I was only gone for a year….," he smiled back gratefully.

"I guess you remind me of an old buddy of mine. It's nothin'. I hope she's worth it."

"She?"

Tom glanced back towards him, "It is though, right? It's always a girl. We do everything for girls. We'd run back into a falling building for one…"

"Get on a flight from Europe… your name is Tom?"

"Yeah, Thomas Delmarco,"

"Will Thompson."

"Good luck Will."

"Thanks,"

With that the two men went their separate ways, with Danny McConner coughing the dust of September 11th out of his lungs and as he stepped back into the rain, he couldn't help but imagine how many other guys that reminded him of Thomas Delmarco he would have to help before the guilt ever subsided.

Will shifted his steely indigo eyes and walked swiftly towards the other door, hoping to find old friends, and the woman he should have loved so many years ago.

**Moments before…**

The beats smoothed into a haunting rumba inside the Latin club, while the lights went blue.

Rachel's hands shifted Chandler's face back towards her direction. They seemed foreign in the mechanical lights.

"There is something…something I couldn't tell you over the phone. But I need to tell you now…" Rachel said wearily, her soft blue eyes sparkling with moisture.

"Do you want to go talk somewhere?"

"I can't…."

"Why?"

"Because anywhere else….would feel like it was less innocent, because anywhere else would feel like an affair. Chandler—"

The soft wrinkles on her forehead emerged with worry.

"I don't understand," Chandler mumbled defiantly, his world beginning to crash and change around him.

She removed her long hair from her face. The gentle waves were starting to fall.

"Oh God," She breathed in the air above her. Emotion strained her words; "Chandler, I, there's no way to say this…the baby…they think it happened last night,"

"What?" he sputtered rapidly.

"I had to go check. Because something felt wrong. I felt it and I lied, I'm so sorry. I just couldn't tell you over the phone. But the baby isn't okay."

Rachel's small body shook with sobs. She was exasperated with tears and they still choked her words.

"I miscarried."

"What," Chandler's pale thin lips parted open in disbelief. His mouth dried as if thousands of cotton particles clung to his throat and tongue.

His feet stumbled backwards slightly as he gasped. The sharp intake of air hurt his lungs.

"My child…it's dead?"

He felt his legs folding underneath him. Images of graveyards and Monica's tears and car crashes swirled in front of his face. Numbness trickled down into his nerves.

"Why didn't you tell me?" his mouth was dry with grief. His skin turned ashen.

"Chandler, I—"

"--Because Ross was there, you couldn't tell me my child was dead?"

It was too much for him to process. It was too much for most.

"No… BECAUSE it was over the phone! Because I needed to see you to even be able to say it! And this…" she stated looking out into the bodies moving around her. "This is the only place we have…"

Chandler stared on into her face while time seemed to stop.

"How….how did it happen…was it, was it Monica's bruises on you," he asked awkwardly, holding his chest like his heart would explode spontaneously.

Tears gleaming across her skin reflected the red lights above.

He choked on the possibility that Monica unknowingly killed her only blood child.

Cigarette smoke filled the space between them from somebody ignoring the signs behind the bar. The lights became distant and distorted.

Then a more horrible possibility broke across his face. His cheeks turned to an emblazoned shade of red.

"Was it Monday night….was it when I—"

Rachel shook her head, "—No, no. Sometimes these things just happen when the pregnancy's still early. It wasn't anything anyone did. Not anyone Chandler. "

His worn eyes stayed on the floor for a long time before he looked back up.

"Are you okay?"

Rachel couldn't quite read his expression but she tried to answer truthfully. What did okay mean anymore.

"A little sore, but I'll be fine," she managed with contrived strength. Her beautiful eyes were staring steadily through the lights. "I'm so sorry Chandler. I know it's ridiculous, but are you… okay?"

He rested his hands on Rachel's stomach with tears flowing openly down his shadowed face.

"I'm sorry Rachel...It's my fault. All of this is my fault."

"Chandler, I'm sorry," her eyes swelled with compassion.

His mind was attempting to process the tremendous pain rising inside of him. He felt all his insides turning to black. There was nothing left. The space that used to hold his heart felt greater.

"It's my fault…I was so stupid." He chided with an oddly empty stare.

Without forewarning Rachel clung to him and hugged him tightly. "I'm here. We both fucked up."

His eyes strained and searched her face desperately.

"Who am I? Who is this person…this person that does these things? These horrible things."

He spread his long narrow fingers in front of him. It was as if there was a blood only he could see staining them.

"Chandler, you didn't know this would happen. You thought. We thought, you and Monica would work out and that this would work—"

"—what were we thinking?" he asked, his face still shining from unrestrained tears.

He looked years older in the slowly timed lights behind his frame.

"We were… we got lonely and….we needed one another very much. We thought we could make things better…"

Her small hands were resting somewhere in between her stomach and her heart. She felt her delicate wedding band rubbing against her fingers.

"This means—"he muttered as if every word left an odd metallic taste in his mouth.

His eyes were glossed over.

"—we have to be honest with Ross and Monica," she finished for him.

Chandler's face grimaced.

"She hates me. How am I supposed to explain this?" Chandler exasperated.

"I'm wondering the same thing, but I can't lie anymore. I'm so tired of lying." Rachel said firmly, despite her trembling hands.

More time went by along with silence. The rest of the world, with all the other couples on the floor glancing curiously while they slow-danced, were thousands of miles away.

Chandler leaned in towards her gently, "may I?"

Rachel nodded her head in approval fighting back more tears.

He enfolded his arms around her and she wrapped her small arms around him in return.

He tilted his head and whispered into her small ears, "I'm so sorry. This isn't me."

Rachel nodded her head 'I know' and then replied honestly, "I'm scared too."

"Rachel?"

She tilted her head up towards him and waited for him to place his words.

"And please…. don't say this is just because we had to speak in person, we could have met at Central Perk. Why did you agree to meet me _here?" _

Rachel was silent in her thoughts for a long time before her eyes met his firmly.

"Because I knew…."

"Knew what?"

She pressed her head into his chest and whispered into his shirt. "I thought that they would follow. And that they needed to see this. And you would have to talk with Monica before you got to afraid. Because she would come for Ross."

"Did you bring them here?" his masculine tone wavered.

"No, something inside just told me they would come. I mean. Wouldn't you?"

Chandler rubbed his hand gently through her hair.

"How..."

"Mike saw us here not so long ago. He never said anything…but I always knew that if he had too…he would show them."

Chandler cleared his throat and began to shift his eyes between the tables and walls.

"Rachel…?"

"20 minutes. I saw them come in 20 minutes ago," she answered without pausing for the question.

"Oh God, I'm not ready for this," he thought aloud.

They had supported one another for some many years, but now it was time to move on.

He stretched his arms out and pulled Rachel's small frame away from his chest. They were done dancing.

**Friday Nights**

Mike held Phoebe in his toned arms firmly against the shadowed back wall as they watched Ross and Monica sitting at the table in front of them, staring off into the crowd of salsa dancers and servers.

A blue and red light shined down on their faces and glanced off the table.

Phoebe didn't plan on saying a word. She just wanted to show them what Mike had told her.

No more mistakes. No more selfish endeavors.

Her older green eyes followed Monica much more than Ross.

There was certain uneasiness to her.

Phoebe felt Mike shift his weight underneath her and she sighed, leaning into his shoulders; all they could do now was watch.

Her eyes cantered slowly back in Ross' direction.

His intense gaze was fixated on one woman. Ross observed his beautiful wife moving gracefully on the dance floor.

Only a few other couples danced around them now.

Her white tank top and skirt hugged her frame and her hair swayed in accordance with her body.

She was stunning.

And she was crying.

He couldn't see her face….he just knew.

This time it was he who held Monica's hand under the table; rubbing his thumb against her fingers to comfort her.

But she wasn't comforted.

She didn't understand why Phoebe brought her here. It proved nothing…except these two had been having an emotional affair on top of who knows what else…

She had seen enough.

She cupped her hand around her Long Island and looked away as her dark eyes fought back sadness. Her mind inadvertently flashed back to memories of the past as she watched Rachel move effortlessly while whispering something to Chandler.

Everything about Rachel was familiar. Suddenly she saw her Aunt Katherine's backyard from all those years ago, bathed in nostalgic evening light. The grass was a vibrant shade of deep green and the sprinkle of rain lit up the tips of the bladed grass.

The yard was a beautiful example of a Home&Garden Hampton backyard.

The spacious land stretched into deep forests to the left and right. In the back, ample dark waves crashed against the East Coast beach.

A beautiful white European gazebo stood resolutely in the middle of the yard.

The rain was beginning to pour from the crimson and purple sky.

The aroma of lilies and laundry swirled around the afternoon air.

A shrill shriek rose from a small boy as Ross Gellar frantically collected his tea set and sprinted towards the large Victorian deck. His tuff of thick, short dark hair was being matted by the rain.

Judy Gellar, the young boy's protective mother, beckoned for her baby with a wide arm motion resembling a reverse birthing technique.

While she guided Ross back into her sister's wealthy estate, removing his wet tea gown, she offhandedly shouted for Monica and Rachel to come in.

The two little girls laughed with glee as they spun in the rain in their cotton flower dresses.

Rachel fell delightfully into the thick grass, her golden long hair flying behind her.

The silhouette of her frame contrasted beautifully against the falling evening sun.

7-year-old Monica's blue eyes widened as she tilted her head towards the rain. A smile eased into her young face as water poured down her fair skin.

Suddenly she felt a small hand within hers tugging her towards the gazebo.

Squealing, the two girls ran underneath into their sacred hiding place, below the white crafted planks of the gazebo floor.

They sat Indian-style and laughed hysterically over Ross' antics until minutes had passed.

While Monica was captivated by the sunset glowing through the summer precipitation, she felt Rachel move closer by her side.

By the time Monica turned around Rachel was less than a foot away from her face; staring curiously into her eyes.

Her lips tasted like strawberries. That's what Monica always remembered.

After Rachel kissed her, she fell into the grass giggling once again. Monica was rendered motionless. It was their first and last; birthed by the innocence of youth.

Before Monica could ask why, Rachel answered with youthful reasoning; "It's a promise. We'll always be best friends."

Now as Monica watched Rachel dance with her husband it was too much to remember how close they used to be.

Monica's mind crashed back into her Manhattan surroundings.

As she was about to pull away from the table, Ross squeezed her hand a little tighter.

His eyes pierced into her thoughts.

"Look closer," he said as he turned back towards the dance floor, a look of fascination on his face.

Rachel has always had that ability.

"I understand…" he said quietly into her small ears. A look of realization dawned on his dark face.

"Ross—"

"Monica—they're saying goodbye…"

"Ross!!"

But her brother ignored her and stood up. He crossed the floor and walked passed empty faces and empty dancers until he was only a mere foot away from his wife.

"I'm not going to hit you," Ross said emotionlessly glancing at Chandler.

As Chandler walked around Rachel and past Ross all he could muster was the weak reply.

"Maybe you should…I would."

Chandler left them with his shoulders shrouded with defeat.

Rachel stayed facing the other way. She didn't know how to even meet the honest brown eyes of her husband.

As Ross gazed into her back he decided if there was ever a duty for each man to give the woman he loves a grand speech, this would be his.

He wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and rested his lips on the back of her neck.

His baritone steadied he forced his heart to speak.

"Rachel…just let me say this," he said gently. "I've seen you say goodbye a thousand times. …a thousand times…I've seen it in your eyes because it's all I see in my dreams… I see two years ago. I see JFK airport and thousands of meaningless individuals standing in our way. There's a crowed highway and then there's tremendous speed. Then came LaGuardia and your shocked expression. I see you standing there in your grey skirt and black thingy with the white shirt underneath. Then I see you, "he choked, "I see you with tears in your eyes. And this great sadness. Because you were saying the most permanent goodbye. I see that day everyday in my mind."

"Ross," she said, her eyes shining.

"Rachel…" He said forcibly turning her small shoulders around. "Do you know, you…are…everything…to…me…I just needed to see the way you looked at him….I needed to see…" Ross said with the bass in his voice stalling, "I needed to see that it wasn't the way you looked at me that day you stayed in New York. I just needed to see, what you couldn't say. I know what your goodbye's look like. I know that's what you were saying to him in your own way. I just needed to know that you wouldn't show up in his doorway one day. I needed to see that this goodbye had no resemblance of a return."

Her eyes widened slowly with the memory of Paris and Ross.

Her voice wavered.

"No one could ever give me, what you have given me. And I love you…and this is where I want to be…with you" Rachel said, looking into his eyes through her crying, "I love you so much. For anyone else…that day I was leaving for Paris….it would have been goodbye--"

Before she could even finish her sentence, Ross engulfed her in his arms. Her body fell into his chest and every fiber of her being willed itself towards him. He held her fiercely with his face buried in her shoulders. Tremendous sighs of relief exited her lungs in large sobs. Hot tears ran down her face clearing a trail down her red cheeks.

"I love you…I love you…I'm sorry I waited till now…I was so scared…" she whispered the familiar words into his ears, her hands running through his dark hair.

His tone was more pitchy than usual as he cleared moisture from his coffee eyes, "I love you."

The smoke continued to color the air around them, trapping the red lights. They were clinging to each other's souls desperately. Music was progressing in some distant background. All of a sudden the crowded environment seemed too much.

"Let's get out of here," he whispered.


	28. Finale III

** Finale III**

**The Death of New York's Doors**

Chandler watched them leave and then turned in defeat towards the front door. He was done with this place, with this street, with this city. Monica saw his defeated blue eyes and in them all she saw was longing for Rachel.

While walking towards the entrance his eyes finally met Monica's and his head spun in dismay. Without a word she took off ripping her way through the crowd, out of the building.

He followed and pushed Mike out of his way, who had appeared randomly from somewhere in the dark.

Chandler didn't care where Mike had come from…he just wanted him out of his way.

He grabbed his cotton shirt and pushed him back into a nearby wall.

Mike gritted his teeth in frustration but Phoebe held her husband's hand resolutely.

Her eyes said this moment was Monica and Chandler's.

Behind them, deep within the crowd of small dinner tables, Will went past Ross and Rachel searching through the clouded air.

The girl he jumped on a plane for and crossed the Atlantic for was nowhere to be seen. He was a hell of a long way from Europe.

And then he saw her.

His heart stopped because she was more…

Just simply more….of everything than what he remembered.

They fell in love when Monica moved to the suburbs and her married life became another job. But she cared too much for Chandler to ever cross that line.

All that was left was a bundle of unsaid things and lingering glances.

The last day they ever saw one another was the funeral.

He remembered the tall oak trees shadowing them under the cool grey sky.

She was hauntingly beautiful that day; dark and small. He managed only to graze her hand with the crowd of mourners around her.

Their blue eyes locked.

It was if she wanted to say 'don't leave me' but the woman within her suppressed that childish cry.

Instead she said, "Thank you for coming."

He mourned their end for days; holing up in his East Side loft, living off of cinnamon toast crunch and expired milk. It was an end that never really begun.

So when his software company wanted to expand to France, he jumped at the opportunity to get away from what he could never have.

But after Phoebe had called and explained everything she could a few days ago. It was all Will needed to realize how much Monica would need him right now. He never got over her. In so many dreams he imagined that she had run to that airport like Ross did for Rachel…

He drank the horrid coffee at JFK for hours….just waiting…before he left that day.

"Where is she?" he now asked the lengthy blonde in front of him.

She turned around instantly while keeping one hand on Mike behind her.

"Will! You made it! She just left," replied Phoebe. "…with Chandler."

Like a soldier on a mission Will turned towards the door.

Just as he started after them Phoebe stepped in the way. "Give them a minute. If you go now you'll just confuse her more. And you and Chandler will fight. Let her say goodbye."

Meanwhile Ross and Rachel had found themselves lost in some backroom of the building; cardboard and cleaning supplies mixed in the stale air around them.

The room was pitch black.

Ross' strong hands searched around the far walls until he found a metal door.

Rachel pushed forward into the silver handle until she heard a loud click.

The heavy worn door crept open into a narrow brick alley way. The rain drizzling with soft 'plop' sounds onto the walkway.

While still in the doorway, looking out into New York's night, she pulled Ross into her kiss.

The wind blew into the doorway, spraying them with rain.

She shivered and he pulled her closer into his broad chest.

Their eyes adjusted to the dark alley slowly and Rachel thought she felt tears on Ross' face. But she couldn't be sure with the rain.

"I want you," she said slowly clinging on to his shirt. "Not here. Anybody could…"

Ross nodded his head and moved out into the alley, letting go of her embrace.

He saw another side door parallel to theirs.

With a great masculine effort, he pushed his tall muscular frame into the door and it flew open.

The sound of metal crashing resounded piercingly in the open space.

He found a light switch and the halogen lights exploded into action. The kitchen of some small eatery was bathed in a harsh beam of light. Silver shined everywhere in countertops and cookware.

Before he could turn around Rachel wrapped herself around his waist. He lifted her up until her toned legs wrapped around his torso.

They kissed distractedly as Ross begun to lose his balance and they toppled into an empty metallic countertop.

Before Ross could apologize, Rachel exploded with uncontrollable laugher.

After minutes passed, all he could do was smile until he begun to laugh along with her.

Between deep breaths of amusement, Rachel exclaimed. "Were we serious? It smells like pancakes and ammonia."

Monica and Chandler were running down the streets at a break neck pace. Headlights were flashing over them like patterns.

Reality was a distant notion now as they rushed through Manhattan's streets.

She had noticed him about half a block out of the Latin club and all her instincts told her to do was run.

She didn't trust him. And she certainly didn't trust herself with him.

Out of all the dangerous things in this city, she never thought she'd be running from Chandler.

She was pushing and ripping her way through bystanders when he finally caught her by her arm. "Wait, we've got to talk!"

His contact burned her skin. She couldn't explain it. It was purer than hate. It was something like the difference between petroleum diesel and biodiesel.

Instinctively without hesitation she spit in his face and slapped him into a nearby building's wall. The man she loved was sent crashing into a wall. For a moment the concept itself confused her and she looked into his tired eyes with equal confusion.

But all she saw was Rachel. And the hate reemerged.

Chandler fell back into the wall stunned. Blood smeared his hands.

Monica noticing she was on Grove Street she took off running down the sidewalk towards Central Perk. She was creating distance between them now. Chandler was out of breath from all his years of covert smoking yet he pushed through the blinding lightening-like pain in his chest.

Huge puffs of air were rushing in and out of him.

They rushed into their old apartment stairway as Monica threw the lobby door behind her. Chandler collided headfirst into the door. And with a sickening crack broke his nose. Spurts of red shot everywhere. He grasped it in pain and ripped the door handle open.

He screamed out in frustration. If she would just stop…just for a second….

"Monica. It's not what you think!!!!" he shouted into the empty hallway, straining his vocal cords. "Stay the hell away from me Chandler!" she yelled behind her as she climbed the stairs as fast as her strength would allow. Her hair was flying wildly around her. She reached Joey's door as she banged for him to open up.

Chandler reached the floor with dark blood still pouring from his face. The steams were reddening his polo shirt. He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around firmly. Anger and pain lacing his voice. He pushed her into the wall beside Joey's apartment door.

"STOP. YOU CAN'T JUST RUN FROM THIS SHIT MONICA. I'M SORRY!!! OKAY I'M SORRY!! I ran to Rachel because I wanted to die, okay. Because we were dying. You wouldn't even talk to me—"

"Don't you fucking blame me!!!! DON'T YOU DARE BLAME ME."

His voice cracked, "I'M NOT!!! OKAY DON'T' YOU REALIZE I FUCKED UP. DON'T YOU REALIZE I KNOW THAT? Okay, I know I'm shit for doing this. But I didn't sleep with her. NOT ONCE. She loves you so much. She would never do that to you--" he said with his arms shaking her.

"Bullshit!!!" Monica screamed, while tearing at his arms to release her.

"SHE WAS CARRYING OUR CHILD!!!"

Her arms stopped flailing almost immediately as her mouth gapped open. She stared widely into his earnest expression.

"A child," she whispered in grief stricken confusion. She closed her eyes as the world ended around her.

Outside the Latin club, Phoebe, Mike and Will, now stood anxiously waiting for any sign of Monica and Chandler.

'Where could they have gone?' Phoebe wondered with a bit of worry gathering in her stomach. She had assumed that they would just be out front somewhere.

Mike sat against the curb while Will paced back and forth.

Phoebe sighed while watching Will clench and unclench his hands. She called him because she knew Monica needed someone who had nothing to do with any of this. But who loved her desperately.

All those moments, they thought Phoebe hadn't noticed.

They should have known better.

It was never necessary to talk about because Phoebe knew Monica would never have an affair. But nevertheless, she always noticed how her and Will interacted after he was invited to their Thanksgiving dinner all those years ago. The way they touched at the funeral for the twins.

For a second, she had thought of Richard only to remember gravely he passed away a few months ago from heart complications.

Monica would never admit it affected her. But Phoebe always wandered if that's why the drinking and self imposed isolation increased.

Suddenly her blue Nokia cell phone interrupted her thoughts with The Fray's latest hit.

"Hello…"

2 minutes later, Phoebe's mind was in overload.

She dropped her phone and the plastic casing broke open on the concrete.

Her expression remained agape.

Her thoughts attempted to order themselves. 'Slow down Pheebs,' she thought as Charlie's voice swirled inside her. 'Think carefully…'

"Phoebe!" Mike's strong voice broke her trance as he grabbed her hands, "What's wrong?"

Will threw his head back towards them.

"Monica…she…she….she stole something from Charlie. Charlie just realized…it's gone. Monica has a gun."

"Oh my god," Mike stared down the street and staggered backwards.

Before they could turn back in Will's direction he was bolting down the street heading west.

"Will!!!" Phoebe screamed after him.

Mike stepped in front of her and handed her his phone.

"Use this…to call Ross and Rachel…I saw them leave out the back door, maybe their not too far. We need Ross right now. Do not tell them about the gun. Just say we need them to meet you here, now. Pheebs, baby, can you do that?"

She nodded her head slowly while holding Mike's razor. "Okay," she mumbled still staring down the street with wide eyes, brimmed with tears.

"Phoebe!!"

"Okay…Yes." She met his concerned stare and begun to dial Rachel's cell.

Mike took off down the sidewalk after Will.

Phoebe starred into the traffic of Manhattan's night in utter fright. Her eyes flinched erratically as if she were expected a gun shot to ring out at any second.

"Shit," she exclaimed as Rachel didn't pick up her phone.

For some reason her mind went to Joey. 'Where was Joey tonight?'

She pulled the phone out once again.

"Hey Joey?" she said frantically.

"Phoebe's? What's wrong?"

"Uh…where are you right now?"

"I'm in the convenient store near the coffee shop…what's wrong?"

"Monica—"

"Monica what Phoebe?"

"Is not doing so well and I just wanted you to keep a look out for her and Chandler. Maybe their in your area?"

"Is Chandler trying to hurt her?"

"Uh…I don't know. I don't think so."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the Latin club. They were here and then they left."

"You took Monica to that place?!" he questioned aggressively.

Phoebe lowered the phone from her ear in defeat when she felt it buzz with another call on the other line. She clicked over to Rachel.

"What's up Pheeb's," Rachel said, sounding somewhat distracted.

"Where did they go?" Will asked impatiently as he and Mike faced down a bum in Central Park, who said he had seen two people running past a few minutes ago.

After sensing their desperation, he figured his disclosure was worth a few Jackson's.

They didn't agree. And so Will punched him senseless.

Stopping only to save his knuckles for Chandler later.

"Where?" he growled, while lifting up the man by his coat.

"I walked by them on grove," he garbled through broken teeth and blood.

Will dropped him and Mike stepped over him just as the bum yelled out, "that's assault bitch!"

Monica's blue eyes opened with shock.

"You're lying. They were destroyed. Our reproductive material is gone"

"Because I destroyed what was left after we implanted the embryos…"

"WHAT? How could you do this? How could you just decide to do this? Who does that?"

"IT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT WOULD MAKE YOU FORGIVE ME FOR KILLING THEM, okay I know it's my fault I didn't take them to the clinic sooner! I KNOW…" he shouted, crying in a way only a broken man could. Loudly shedding all the tears he had never cried before. He backed away from her shaking violently. "It's my fault I took them to the park in the winter? It's all my fault."

"Rachel's pregnant with our child?" she said despondently.

Chandler looked down at his feet with his blood stained face contouring oddly from sadness.

"She was…" he muttered.

"I don't understand. What do you mean 'was'."

Chandler backed up and fell against Monica's old apartment door. He slid down to the floor and covered his face.

"The baby miscarried last night. She lost it."

The couple, that stood facing one another, in their old hallway, was now unrecognizable.

As the realization of his actions sunk in Monica grew hysterical. "How could you do this…how could you do this again!?"

"I hate you….I HATE YOU," she screamed as she threw her phone into his face.

Chandler deflected it with his arms and stood back up wearily

"Monica…"

She turned around and began to bang her small fists into to Joey's door until Chandler was sure she was going to break her hands.

He reaches towards her to force her into a hug to calm down.

"GET OFF!!" get off….you don't have the right to ever touch me again… not EVER!"

"Monica I am….so…sorry." he said continuing attempt calming her down by holding her still.

She froze after he said that.

Her breathing seemed to stop. She slumped over into his chest and lifted her eyes into his.

She shook her head as if in slow motion.

"No, you're not…not like you will be."

As his mouth formed the circle 'what' she pulled out Charlie's father's gun.

Chandler felt its metal point in his stomach.

He freezes.

"Is that a loaded gun?" he inquired already knowing the answer.

"Oh God, stay away from me Chandler, I swear. Don't….touch….me…."

"Monica, you do this…and we can't go back. No one can ever take this back."

"SHUT UP! I gave you nothing but chances. All you had to do was be honest. That's it."

"Monica! Please! This isn't what we are." he begged while falling back into the opposite wall, near their old apartment door.

A bullet shot rang through the still air.

Blood splattered onto the painted walls and wooden floor.

Their old apartment door swung open back and forth slowly revealing the vacant space of their home of over a decade.

The bullet had ricocheted of the door knob and the propelled the door open.

Whoever lived there was obviously in the process of moving out.

Monica stared into her old apartment while gasping for breath, lying on the floor of the narrow hallway.

Her blue eyes were glassy and distanced.

Warm blood was flowing into the cracks of the hardwood in front of the door; forming random lines and patterns.

Chandler screamed in agony.

"Oh God!!"

He lifted his left hand and revealed the dark hole in his palm with fragments of white bone poking out into the air.

He rolled over and breathed laboriously through his mouth.

Monica watched the product of her actions emotionlessly. The gun had fallen from her hands and for the first time she realized the immense weight on her back.

She attempted to move but it pinned her to the floor.

She looked down towards the hallways entrance and noticed a paper bag full of fruit and cereal toppled over.

Then she saw him.

Joey's strong body draped over her on the floor. He was why she missed Chandler's chest.

He didn't move. He didn't say anything.

He just held her while he trembled and Chandler hollered in pain.

The clamor of feet rose up the stairwell and into the hallway. Mike and Will breathlessly rushed into the stunning scene before them.

Will immediately pried Joey away from Monica's feeble frame while Mike knelt behind Chandler.

Joey collapsed onto the floor beside them in tears. His face was pink and exhausted.

Mike wrapped Chandler's hand with an extra shirt he had on. Chandler whimpered definitely with his head pressing against the wall.

"It was an accident," he answered Mike's already skeptical expression.

He gritted his teeth as more tears rolled down his blood stained face.

"Will?" Monica said almost silently while touching his face to see if he was real.

She had never touched his face before.

"I don't understand…how are you here? Europe?"

"Shh…It doesn't matter. I'm here. I love you. I know it's too much. But I do. And you should just know that I came back for you. And we're going get through this."

Monica seemed sedated by his presence.

All she could manage was a feeble, "okay."

He wiped away her tears with his sleeve.

"Where's the gun?"

"Over there…is he okay? I don't know what I was….I just couldn't stop my hand."

"He'll be fine" Will said picking up the gun and tucking it in his pants. He glanced towards Chandler's direction offhandedly.

"Joey does anybody live here right now?" he gestured towards the open apartment door.

Joey spoke up weakly, his voice scratched and deep, "no…some blonde just moved out."

"Alright, Mike, take Monica in there and get her some water. Joey, open your door. We need some alcohol for Chandler."

The boys went to work swiftly.

Minutes later Will, Joey, and Chandler were alone treating Chandler's wounded hand in Joey's apartment.

"It went clean through," Joey said patting his best friend's shoulder while gesturing towards the bullet hole.

Eventually Will turned to Joey and asked for him to check on Monica and make sure Phoebe, Ross, and Rachel knew they were all here.

The moment Joey closed the door behind himself; Will dropped the gauges and alcohol back onto the kitchen counter.

His steel eyes narrowed on Chandler's grimaced face.

"Chandler?"

"What?" he responded agitatedly, seemingly falling in and out of awareness.

"Chandler I need for you to listen carefully, because I won't repeat myself."

Chandler lifted his eyes and glanced at Will in confusion, feeling very uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"okay." He said dryly.

"Monica is a beautiful human being. You were so fortunate to have her as your wife. And as long as she was happy. So was I. But now you've fucked up. And you've hurt your wife beyond words. She's never going to be what we knew ever again. Because you're actions have changed her. And this angers anyone who ever loved her. Including me.

So now when I see you bleeding in a hallway in front of her. When I see her bruised hands and red eyes.

When I see a woman who would never shoot anyone; having to wound the man she loved to protect herself.

It's unforgivable.

Chandler it's unforgivable."

Chandler's eyes widened as Will got up, walked through the kitchen and locked the door. He then walked towards the television and turned up the sound system until it was deafening.

The CSI dialogue sounded into the dimly lit apartment.

Will closed the open window in the living room.

"What are you doing," he croaked.

"You see." Will continued. "I understand you better than you know. I know what it feels like to be desperate, and how badly you just want to make things better, especially for someone you love. I get it. So that's why I know you'll understand what I have to do now. So Monica can move on with her life… Do you love her?" he asked tilting his head slightly.

Chandler's body begun to shake as he struggled to say "yes."

"Good. Good. Then what I want you to do now is be very, very quiet for her, because this is going to hurt… a little," Will explained succinctly as he started to withdraw the gun from the back of his jeans.

His facial expression was blank.

Chandler began to cry brokenly into his blood.

Will clicked the gun against his head. He held it firmly against the temple.

"They'll know…you can't—"Chandler stuttered.

"Let's call it self defense. A defense that ensures you'll never affect me or Monica ever again."

* * *

Back in the apartment hallway, a brother darted frantically up the stairwell to protect his sister. After Phoebe received Joey's call they rushed to Grove St. Rachel trailed immediately behind her husband. 

When they reached the landing of their floor, Phoebe immediately went through Monica's open old apartment door and ran to Mike.

Ross and Rachel stood petrified in the middle of the walkway.

They took in the fallen fruit and pools of blood staining the wood.

Rachel choked on her own vomit as it rose from the depths of her esophagus.

Ross became even more enraged.

"MONICA?!"

"She's in here," someone answered from the door on the left.

Ross ran to her and slid onto the floor beside her. He lifted her into his arms and checked her all over demanding "are you okay," repeatedly.

She shook her head in shame and then turned away from her brother's questioning face.

"I shot him…I shot Chandler."

To her surprise, Ross just nodded his head and pulled her closer. She begun to sob uncontrollably into his broad shirt.

Rachel just stood above them for a long time.

Joey watched her carefully from his seat in front of the balcony window. The lights of Manhattan illuminated his frame in the dark room.

Phoebe crawled down to Monica's side and stroked her long raven hair.

"I'm so sorry."

Monica wept even harder as she managed a few words, "oh Pheebs. It's not your fault. I needed to know."

Phoebe embraced Monica and Ross on the floor; all three bodies intertwined and heaving with emotion.

Rachel cantered over to Joey in a trance; "Where is he? Is…is he dead?"

"No…he uh, he just has a hand wound. He'll live."

She looked around the familiar apartment she thought she'd never see again.

Joey offered up the explanation without her asking; "they're moving out. The bullet hit the door knob after it went through Chandler."

Her long dark blonde hair shook as Rachel nodded her head in comprehension. Slowly she diverted her eyes back to Joey and his trembling hands.

"You stopped her didn't you?"

He nodded briefly before look away towards the window. His eyes were dark and heavy.

As if on cue, Charlie's tall frame appeared into the doorway. Her mouth was wide open from all the blood splattered.

She blinked several times as if it would disappear.

When her eyes adjusted she rushed over to Joey, who opened his arms in relief.

They hugged each other intensely before Charlie went over to Monica to see if she was alright.

As Charlie arrived, Ross stood solemnly.

"Where is he?"

No one answered.

With that Ross walked briskly out into the hallway's yellow light.

The blood tapered all the way to Joey's apartment door. Ross forced his shoulder into the door…

* * *

On the inside Will heard Ross' tremendous effort but didn't stop what he was doing. 

He was in a focused rage. Finally his hand tired of the effort. Chandler could barely hold his pistol whipped face up.

But Will didn't care.

"Look at me. LOOK AT ME! Do you see these bullets?" Will threw the bullets one by one into Chandler's red lap. "You're not worth…these bullets."

Chandler heaved heavily and started coughing out blood.

Bang. Bang. Crack.

The sound of Ross' body crashing into the room echoed into the kitchen.

The moment Ross processed what Will was doing he halted abruptly. His childhood friends both had tremendous amounts of blood on their hands.

Ross walked over and hugged Will who was obviously outside himself.

"That's enough…"

Rachel came in behind him and gasped at Chandler's pulpy face stringed with blood. Blue and black were stretched across swelling knots.

Noticing her presence Chandler attempted to smile charmingly.

"I fell."

Tears welled in her eyes as she knelt by his side.

"Chandler."

"Yeah." he said touching her shoulder.

"I think you should go."

His eyes drowned with tears. His shoulders slumped as he held a blue kitchen towel over the other. "I think…that that hurt the most." He whispered into her ear as he picked himself off of the linoleum floor.

The blood smeared in his shadow.

He winced as he walked by Will. When he reached Ross he slowed. Without looking him in the eyes he said resolutely, "I _am_ sorry."

"I know." Ross replied. "It just doesn't matter."

Joey entered the hallway just as Chandler did.

"You saved my life."

Joey couldn't say anything sufficient so he opted for silence.

"Maybe it's just me being stupid from the loss of blood but are you not coming to the hospital with me?" Chandler asked bitterly as his mouth ached.

Joey lowered his head, "I should really just be here for Monica right now. Your cab for the hospital is waiting though."

Chandler passed Joey with a limp and turned around before reaching the edge of the stairwell.

"Yeah, okay." He said in a forced grunt.

With that Chandler held his head as if all hope had died. He always knew, he'd be the first to leave. He refused to glance back at the place that was once his world. At the people that were once his heart.

* * *

Half an hour later after Will, Ross, and Joey cleaned up much of the blood, they all had managed to drift into Monica's old apartment; sitting in their respective corners reflectively. 

Joey's jaw was firmly nuzzled into Charlie's shoulder as she held on to her bag. A bag which contained the weapon of infinite possibilities.

She sat there pondering how fragile the human experience had suddenly become all in the process of a week.

Mike was whispering comfort into Phoebe's ear as she tried not to shoulder the guilt of what happened here between Monica and Chandler. Her fingers rubbed flakes of blood off of themselves.

She couldn't help but wonder if she had made another mistake. But when she saw the way Will held Monica….she couldn't help but feel relief. Maybe something was right.

Will was caressing Monica as she drifted off to sleep in his gentle arms. His blonde hair was matted with perspiration. He hummed a soft French lullaby to her calmly.

For the first time in months, she could see glimpses of her past and future simultaneously. She smiled slightly as she dreamed of her children; born and unborn. Then more and more children fell into her thoughts running in and out of beautiful green trees; all with Will by her side.

Chandler was out there somewhere in the distance watching them. But he was happy for them. His hand had healed and he was in love again.

He was dancing in a New York park with a gentle faceless woman.

And for the first time in a long time, she felt as if she was dancing too.

Rachel looked out of the clear balcony window into the Manhattan night, while Ross held her in his lap in the far side of the apartment, next to Monica's old bedroom. He observed his sister carefully while Rachel's thoughts drifted to her limited time alone with Monica while the men cleaned up pieces of Chandler.

She still shivered at all the blood drenching her mind.

After finding trash bags for them, Rachel had walked over to Monica's crumpled figure while Phoebe had let go of Monica's hand to give them some privacy.

For a long while Monica's blue eyes cut into Rachel's stomach.

She stared angrily at first and then curiously and then sadly.

Eventually Rachel leaned towards Monica and took her small hand in hers. Crouching on the floor, Rachel pressed Monica's hand into her stomach gently.

"I think it was going to be a girl."

Monica smiled through blurred eyes, suppressing her primal need to wail.

Before Rachel could apologize. Monica silenced her with a kiss; one on her lips and one on her stomach.

"You're already forgiven. I'm sorry too."

Remembering their childhood kiss, Rachel embraced Monica weeping; attempting to express tremendous amounts of grief and love.

As they held one another, Monica tugged her arms a little firmer and whispered into Rachel's ear, "Don't tell him. I know you want too. But the truth is he'll only blame himself. Tell Ross everything but the miscarriage."

Rachel nodded her head slowly. "Okay, I know." she said as the burden fell off of her shoulders.

Now, they were shadowed in the dark.

The ballad of contrived electrical stars was in full swing as lights flashed on and off in the buildings around them.

Business buildings were shutting down as brownstones were lighting up.

Their worlds had ended.

Secrets created and secrets exploited.

There was no other way to explain this.

It was an apocalypse of Friday nights, Monday's and Wednesdays, conversations, White Russians, Judas Iscariot's, Purgatories, last suppers, touches, superheroes, ashes and feathers, strangers, and declarations of tomorrow.

Over 10 years….10 years of friendships and laughter and cups of coffee came down to a violent emotional week in Manhattan's fall season, where they finally had to confront their true natures.

Their lives will ultimately rebuild and prosper.

But they will never forget the time a dance changed all their lives.

After September 11th, 2001 the World Trade Center's smoldering inferno blazed for precisely 100 days, despite the constant spray of water being applied.

The fires were finally reported to be extinguished on December 19.

It's a vain attempt to estimate how long the indiscretions of 6 friends and their loved ones will smolder underneath their lives.

They danced. And they fell. And then they watched the city dance on without them.

All men have dances, but none will have them as they did, some dances are silent and some are beautiful, some are contrived and some are rhythmic, some are tragic and some are violent, but they and they alone will hold a dance as no one else did.

In their coffee house, in their apartment, in their park, and in their suburbs.

And as their lives fade to black, they will always remember….their dance with New York.

* * *

Thank you sincerely to anyone and everyone who enjoyed this fanfic. Thank you for your dedication and patience. I am tremendously proud of this.

so much love was spent...

sincerely Float.


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